Learning to Love Pink

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First time?” A woman with platinum blond hair and a wide smile looks up at us from where she was getting her fingernails elaborately manicured as we walked into the nail salon, which was decorated with red hearts on the windows and miniature cupids hanging from the ceiling. My husband has this idea that we should give experiences to our children instead of presents, so here we were: at the beauty salon to celebrate Valentine’s Day, just us three girls. My daughters, ages six and four, are practically bursting out of their skin with excitement. But they know they have to be on “indoor behavior” so they make an exaggerated show of acting lady-like. The result is two grinning girls who wriggle rather than walk towards the manicure chairs.

“Can you tell?” I smile back at her.

The woman looks at me approvingly. “My mother would never have taken me into a place like this,” she says a little wistfully. A college-aged client with her toes soaking in a basin of soapy water looks up from her magazine and nods.

“Neither would mine,” I admit. “To tell you the truth, I’m not very girly. This isn’t really my thing...but my girls love this kind of stuff.”

My daughters are seated at two tables, and the Vietnamese nail specialists go to work buffing, filing, and beautifying their nails. They both sit very still with serious expressions on their faces. But when the stylist pounds on her hand as part of the hand massage, four-year-old Athena can’t help giggling. She knows exactly the color she wants for her fingernails—sparkly red (of course).

The stylist deftly applies two coats of polish and sends Athena to sit with her hands under blue lights for quick drying. Then it’s my turn. I spend a lot of time making bread, cleaning up spills and changing diapers. The skin on my hands is cracked and chapped, and my fingernails are a mess. When I don’t know what airbrushing is, the stylist raises her eyebrows at me. “You have to get with the times,” she scolds.

She’s right. In 36 years this is only the second time in my life that I’ve had a manicure. It’s true what I said to the woman at the door—I am anything but girly.

The only girl in my family, I grew up climbing trees and fending off my three older brothers. The knees of my dungarees (once I was old enough to decide, I never wore dresses) always had huge holes in them. I hated plastic dolls and pink. I never owned a Barbie.