COLUMN: Artificial may be the only answer
I was looking through some old family pictures this week and the experience led me to think less on familial unity and more on my awkward adolescence.
While I still genuinely wish that I’d been cool, hip, stylish and good looking while growing up, my 23 years have taught me that there are some things that can only be learned from a youth filled with crooked teeth, bad hair, large glasses and an ill-fitting wardrobe supplied entirely by the local thrift store.
Nature may have slighted me, but I only remember it getting me down once or twice. The beauty of the modern age rests almost solely in the way we have been able to manipulate beauty.
I’m not talking about convincing some poor girl that your buck teeth and bowl cut are actually attractive. There is no language on earth with the expressive power to do that.
Instead, I’m talking about the ways we can manipulate and mask those more undesirable traits until we have reached a level of commitment where, while she could still leave you on grounds of you looking a little too much like something from the “Lord of the Rings,” her doing so would excite a chorus of epithets about her superficiality from her roommates and friends.
I am talking about exfoliating, bathing and other beauty techniques that are foreign to my kind.
Friends and countrymen, these are our only hope of finding mates. I used to think there was another way, but I’ve done some research and concluded that there just aren’t enough blind girls in this world for all of us to land in happy relationships.
To this end, I had my first pedicure this summer. My fiancé and I – yes, I actually found someone and no, I didn’t have to drug her – were visiting her family in Georgia, and she was insistent that I wear sandals. I told Katie I wasn’t much of a sandal person, but the truth was a little deeper than that.
The last time a Pendleton wore sandals, he was walking the streets of ancient Rome, and even then, the sight of his feet landed him a date with some kind Christians and a few lions. Thankfully, not even hungry lions will touch feet like that, and the family name has been preserved until now. Unfortunately, so have our unsightly feet.
And so, while I was quick to point out my wit, wide-spanning knowledge of pop music and my Halo high score, I never had the heart to share the secret of my unsightly feet with my soon-to-be wife.
To escape what I knew would be a dangerous de-shoeing, I turned to pedicure. I have both read and heard that a pedicure is luxurious. And while I suppose it all depends on your definition of luxury, I certainly didn’t see anything luxurious or relaxing about a seemingly nice Thai woman torturing my feet into submission.
Nevertheless, I was running out of options. I entered the beauty parlor hoping for the best, but after a look at my feet, the woman took her files and salts into the back room and emerged with a bench grinder and a welding mask.
Such is the price of beauty, however, and while I’m still a little hazy after the nail polish high I received that afternoon, I walked out with feet that – while not entirely beautiful, look like they could actually belong to a human being.
That night I wore sandals, soon after I proposed, and both of us are pleased as punch about the whole thing.
So what is the moral of the story? I’d like to think that Katie is marrying me for my personality and my ability to type 120 words a minute, but in the end, she’s marrying for a good-looking pair of feet.
Some might see this as dishonest, but I like to think that relationships are all about little surprises.
And I’m sure she’ll be a little surprised to learn that I haven’t had a pedicure since.
Zach Pendleton is a senior majoring in literary studies send any comments or
questions to
zpendleton@cc.usu.edu