One man battles social conformity and gets feet tickled at nail salon

Most often, trips to the nail salon and day spa are associated with women and are frowned upon by men. Recently, I built up the courage, and decided to check out this phenomenon for myself. For the sake of male counterparts and those that have come before me, I challenged the idea of men being hygiene-handicapped. I braved the situation and exposed myself to a woman’s world of beautification. Walking into the salon, all eyes were on me.”Pedicure, Manicure?” the stylist asked.”I would like a pedicure please,” I mumbled. She smiled and walked me to the rear of the shop.As I looked around, all I could see were women looking at me with weird looks on their faces. They looked as if they had just seen Big Foot, their mouths were practically on the floor. I’m sure they were thinking I was out of place and shouldn’t be here.Once the stylist began touching my feet, rubbing them, cutting my toenails, and putting different oils on them, I remembered why I had never done this before. This was way too feminine for me.After all of this I have to admit, that my feet have never looked this good. I couldn’t recognize them after about five minutes of the stylist working on them. My girlfriend seemed to like my feet a lot, too.I’m sure many of the men out there will gladly agree that cutting your own nails at home will get the job done. “I see no need to go into a beauty salon and pay $20 for something as simple as cutting my nails,” said Mikael Allen, a 22-year-old business administration student from Fort Lauderdale.The worst thing about the whole situation is that I am ticklish. I almost kicked the stylist in the head a couple of times. If you are ticklish, then this may be a very trying experience for you.Many of the men I’ve spoken with said they would never go and get a manicure or a pedicure. “I don’t need all of that, I’ll leave the salons and nail shops for the females,” said Allen. They just thought that it was not the masculine thing to do. On the other hand, about a lot of the women I spoke to said that they would prefer a man who did get their nails done. “If a man gets his nails done, then that tells me that he is clean and that he takes care of himself,” said Tiffiani Davis, a 20-year-old junior business administration student from Dallas.So if the majority of women feel this way, why haven’t men responded by going to the salon? I believe it is because it is not widely accepted and usually thought to be a characteristic of homosexuals or a trait of metrosexuality.It is very intimidating to step into a woman’s world like this, it’s like you’re in a far away land and lost with no idea of how or why you got there. Would I ever get a pedicure again? Probably not, it’s just not for me. But I do pose a question to the men of Florida A&M University, if the women you are with wanted you to come with them to the salon and get a pedicure, would you?