Manic for manicures

Five years ago I read a sign on the door of a beauty salon that said: “Name the actor nominated for the most Academy Awards.”

I walked in and answered it: “Meryl Streep”.

“You’re right!” the owner exclaimed. “You win a free set of nails!”

Remembering the long talons of a scary waitress I used to work with who would strum her fingers loudly and impatiently on the bar as I hurried to make her drinks, I declined.

“Thanks, but I can’t really see myself with those,” I explained. “I’m a mom, and I do dishes and housework and stuff.”

“You can still do all that,” the owner said, flashing me her classier set of nails. “What do you have to lose? Treat yourself. If you don’t like them, don’t get them again.”

I spent the next two hours sitting in a manicurist chair watching my boring hands with their short, unpolished nails transform into sleeker, more sophisticated hands. All of a sudden I felt more like a girly girl than I’d ever felt before.

To my surprise I loved them. Surprisingly, my husband didn’t.

“How much were those?” he asked.

“They were free,” I replied. “I won them.”

“You’re not going to get them again are you?” he questioned.

“I think I’m going to have to,” I said, already addicted.  “Look at how pretty they are!”

Laughing, he left me in the room admiring my newfound elegance.

When our two year old daughter Daisy saw them she expressed concern. “Mama needs her nails cut,” was her comment.

“Are those fake?” our five year old son Sam added, as he tried to pull them off.

“Yes,” I replied. “They’re gel nails. Do you like them?”

“They look kinda weird,” he answered.

Undeterred by my family’s initial lack of excitement, I’ve had my nails done every month since then and view it as part of my maintenance program.

Why? Because it makes me feel good, which, in my opinion, is the only reason to do any of these silly aesthetic adjustments to ourselves.

In this day and age when it’s possible to have ten surgeries in a day and come out looking like a completely different person, there’s obviously a danger in going too far. I think at that point it’s not about trying to feel good, but trying to be perfect.

To me, perfection’s a bore. Improvements that we really want are not.

But who’s to say what should be improved and what shouldn’t? If we bought into all the advertisements out there we’d never be able to keep up and be satisfied. What a waste of time. It’s better to decide for ourselves what we want to get enhanced and what we’d rather leave natural.

“You need an eyebrow lift,” my beautiful 27 year old friend was told by a Hollywood director recently. “You’ll never make it in show business without it.”

Luckily she’s got a healthy self esteem, likes her own face and recognizes that not doing such a thing would actually help her stand out without hindering her in the least.

I wonder what that same director might have told a young Meryl Streep when she was first starting out in the business. But I’m sure it wouldn’t have phased her either.