Where I wanted to be was at the Lima Film Festival, a truly good thing, but so did everyone else. I could not get in, I was too late in trying to buy my ticket, so I went and got my bangs trimmed.
Manicurist: Do you want a manicure?
Professor Zero: No, thank you, not today.
M: You need one, and I need the $5.
PZ: Well, all right.
M: What color nail polish do you want?
PZ: No polish, or transparent polish.
M: This (pale pink) is the most transparent I have. It looks more natural, even, than clear polish.
PZ: Hm. All right.
…
PZ: This is not natural, it is the color of bubble gum. Pass me the acetone, please.
M: Oh, you actually meant it when you said you wanted no polish or clear polish?
People seem to believe salons and spas are places of luxury and delight, but mostly I find them to be places of discipline. I had a facial also, and although it was less absurd, it was in the same mold. A session of acupuncture costs less than a facial (facials = $18, acupuncture = $14 first visit, $7 subsequent visits). It has much more content, and more of an effect.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I gave up on all that beauty stuff for the longest time because I didn’t want to sit still. Then recently I had my hair properly styled, but I can’t yet bring myself to do much more right now. I have the odd feeling that it would be like compromising my movement, my integrity. Also I don’t like reducing myself to a thing — to somebody else’s object.
They are places of discipline, masquerading as luxury. (Care of the self, indeed.) You were very generous and forthright with your authoritarian interlocutor.
I had my very first pro manicure a month ago. I got talked into a blue-black sparkly color called “waiting in the limo” or something like that, which was fun for a few days. I then went out and got myself a whole manicure set-up and ran around looking at my (pink) nails with immense pleasure for a few weeks before lapsing back into polish-less lethargy. I think I’ll go paint my toenails now.
Hi, y’all! You *do* want a luxury pedicure. I used to get them in early evening, in Pinheiros, in S. Paulo.
You have to consider: if you are living in a cold water flat, and you have to take two bus rides of over an hour each, changing in Pinheiros, to get home, and the buses are really crowded, so that mostly you stand … and if you go get a fancy pedicure in HOT WATER in between buses, so that rush hour is over when you board your second bus, and you have been resting with your feet in hot water and then up during that time … I would go to this fancy Japanese salon, and pedicures at that time were $3.
Hmmm … maybe I should go get such a pedicure right now.
I don’t use these services, but if I were living in certain circumstances I would.
There was a period in my life when I enjoyed going to the dentist because I could just lie in a chair and have someone else take care of the situation.
My sister loves pedicures and I enjoy them from time to time. Like me, she has problem free hair that just needs cutting every once in a while.
I wish I could convince Latin American hair people that my hair is as problem free as it really is. They expect you to want to have to tease it around, and they are shocked that I don’t have to and that I consider this an advantage.