The Art, Science and Pain of Pedicure

I visited my ‘suking pedicurista’ yesterday and I had another excruciating session after my last visit two weeks ago. If men would say it ‘kwentong barbero’ for fictitious stories fabricated out of the barbershop, women also have ‘kwentong parlor’ shared amongst women who frequent beauty salons for ‘beauty maintenance’ if it’s the right term.

Early Sunday mornings of this salon is jam packed by mostly working moms who would want another round of toe cleaning. Since I have missed a week, Nelly, my ‘pedicurista’ already had a longer time digging in my ingrown nails.

I haven’t finished reading yet the life story of Manny Villar and his ‘nakakalulang paintings’ courtesy of Yes Magazine, a woman who looks younger than I do came in and ask also for a nail service. She sat beside me and waited for a while, soon another ‘pedicurista’ approached her and started rubbing out her old polish, while she often pull up her feet and mutter … Aray! Ang Sakit!

That started the story running, she had a toe infection, she had been taking antibacterial for a misculled ingrown nail done by an inexperienced ‘pedicurista’ and had to file a leave of absence from her office for she cannot walk straight because of pain and that ‘pedicurista’ is nowhere to be found.

Nelly, my pedicurista said that she even attended a short course on the proper procedure and techniques in culling and digging out these excesses in our toes, and not to mention her awesome styles in creating lovely art in your toenails, that for goodness sake, truly a painful sensation and loving the soothing feeling after all is done.

I always remind my ‘pedicurista’ to be careful not to slit my skin, that’s why sometimes I pay double for the slow procedure (Oh, by the way, I bring my own nipper and pusher). What alarmed me is not the pain I had experienced, I must just be lucky for having an experienced ‘pedicurista’, but this chilling evidence of health violations among nail salons, and too often had disastrous consequences. What is more dangerous is that some of these fly by night ‘pedicuristas’ are not skilled the moment you complain, you cannot find them anymore and the host salon will not hold responsible: Salon’s reason, they are not our employee, they just come here render service and take in their commission from the number of foot they have serviced.

So what prodded me to write this is that, there are a lot of questions that came to my mind; example;

1. Do we have a law in the Philippines that protects us from unsanitary nail salons or nail technicians?
2. Who and where to call or to file complain against if there is a violation?
3. But what is the health violation in the first place? I guess we need to define it first.
4. How at risk is the public from unsanitized pushers, nippers etc.?
5. Who controls this industry?
6. When to visit the doctor in case you have infection, and how do you know that your toe is already infected?

Some people out there might know the answer, drop me a line. Because that woman is not the only woman who had experience such, there are plenty of them, and why they don’t complain? – They’re afraid of this – ‘YAN KASI, MAARTE KA!’