Life List #72: Get a pedicure.

My first pedicure.

I always hated my toes. They’re chubby and fat. And they get a bit too hairy. Yes, yes I just admitted all of that on the interweb. (And I wonder why no one wants to date me?)

And then there’s the fact that the big toenail on my right foot is brittle and thin and grows in weird and flaky and gross. It’s a consequence of the many years I spent doing ballet growing up. I put too much pressure on it doing pointe work and it fell off and never grew back quite right.

I’ve always been pretty embarrassed by that toenail. And so, of course, I never really liked people getting too close to my feet. And so, of course, the thought of getting a pedicure was always off the table.

And that’s why I added “get a pedicure” as number 72 on my life list two years ago. While it may seem like a small thing to you, to me, the thought of it was huge and scary. To let anyone get that close to my disgusting little feet is kind of a big deal. (Fish, on the other hand, I guess is OK.)

Over the last year I feel like I’ve managed to shed a lot of my self-consciousness. The girl who left a boy in a Spanish bathroom, saying it was just about age, but really because she didn’t feel attractive, she was worried what he would think of her, she was worried about a lot of things, is much different than the girl who sometimes purposely doesn’t shower because she has a track record now of meeting great men when she’s dirty.

Just saying.

And so my toes just don’t really bother me anymore. Because, really, who cares?

And anyways, whenever I mention to another girl that I’ve never had a pedicure I am met with a look of shock as if I’ve somehow, in my nearly 32 years on earth, missed out on the biggest initiation into womanhood outside of menstruation. And then I’m assured that the pedicurists have “seen it all,” or “have definitely seen worse.”

And so I made the decision that I should finally get one.

My toenails are currently a bit longer than they usually are. I’m not going to lie, I tend to pick at them, but since my back was out for three weeks and I couldn’t reach my feet to save my life, they were allowed to grow unencumbered. So I asked my friend Shanna, who had previously perused my life list and told me everything she’d help me on, if she wanted to go.

A few days later I was sitting in a massage chair getting my feet scrubbed and polished a purplish pink shade of Windy City Pretty (appropriate, no?).

And while I’m sure the pedicurist was thinking “what the fuck happened to this girls toe,” she didn’t flinch. And hopefully she was thinking “well at least it wasn’t as bad as that chick I saw the other week.”

p.s. yes, yes I realize that from the state of my fingernails in those photos I probably should have gotten a manicure too…

Life List #72: Get a pedicure. My first pedicure.

Life List #72: Get a pedicure. My first pedicure.

Bucket List Idea: Get a pedicure. My first pedicure.

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