“There is no such thing as a cheap luxury,” says the reporter Sarah Maslin Nir. It’s a luxury that’s affordable because the women doing the grooming are often exploited, an investigative report in the Times revealed last week. In t he Fiscal Times last year, one woman referred to manicures as “the one luxury that is really a necessity.” Related Stories Every woman has fingernails, and every woman likes to see them trimmed and painted to her taste. And unlike other traditional female-bonding activities like shopping, it invites far less physical comparison and sizing-up. The appeal of the nail salon is immediately obvious: It’s a women-dominated (often women-only) space where it’s physically difficult to do much more than be alone with your thoughts or chat with your friends. I am, however, enticed to get a mani/pedi at least a few times a year, often at the request of a close friend who suggests we go together. The truth is that the source of my discomfort is much more mundane: I’m a lifelong cuticle-chewer who’s ashamed by the usual state of my fingers.
I would like to tell you that this is because I don’t like the class implications of paying another woman - likely an immigrant who speaks little English - to scrape the crud out from under my nails, clip them, and paint them “Tart Deco” pink. Nail salons have always made me uncomfortable.
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