So, remember Client Seven, the 70-year-old lady getting her first facial, despite (or perhaps because of) a host of medical problems including fake knees and high blood pressure?
Well, I must have done something right, because tonight she’s back.
Her daughter has booked them both in for salt scrubs, but failed to show up — something about Seven’s grandson and a meeting with the principal, which doesn’t sound good. “She was supposed to treat me, but I guess I’ll have to treat myself,” says Seven.
She says she’s had a salt scrub before, at a spa in Vegas. But I still make sure we go over the contraindication list pretty carefully, because I’m remembering those fake knees. “They’ll be fine, just not too much pressure,” says Seven. I leave her to get undressed, not surprised when she says she’d rather wear her own underwear than the disposable paper thong we’re supposed to offer clients. (I hate wearing those things and I’m not 70.)
When I come back in — well. I’m going to contradict all sorts of things I’ve written on this blog before, but here it is:
Seven is not pretty.
She’s the kind of overweight where her feet have ballooned up, so her toes are scrunched in sideways on themselves. Her legs have thick, angry scars from her knee surgery. And gravity has done its job most everywhere else.
I have to will myself to touch her.
And of course, intellectually, I’m furious about it. If age and weight are the two great enemies of our unattainable ideal of female beauty, then obviously, Seven has lost on both fronts. Does that mean she no longer deserves to relax, to enjoy the warmth of human touch, to feel good? Of course not. It was an unrealistic standard in the first place. Her body is just as valuable and valid as my own or anyone else’s. If anything, she deserves more respect, because her body has accomplished so much more. (Seeing as I’ve yet to bear a child, have my knees replaced, or go to Vegas.)
And yet. Maybe it’s because that’s just not the way we value women, and that value system is more deeply ingrained in me than I’d like to admit. Maybe it’s because sideways-scrunched toes freak me out. But this salt scrub (my first on a paying client) is difficult. I’ve enjoyed doing body treatments on my classmates (a fairly diverse range of sizes) because they seemed empowering, a way to celebrate a woman’s body without making it about fixing some flaw. But a salt scrub is supposed to make your skin smooth and glowing. People like to have them done before a beach vacation or a hot date. And at first, all I can think is, when is Seven planning to get into a bathing suit and why?
I get myself over it, though. I scrub up both her legs and get into my flow (though yes, I’m grateful that we don’t include feet in this service) and when it’s time to say, “Would you like your breasts included in this service?” I don’t blink when Seven says “yes.” I move in the figure eight pattern that we learned, keeping the towel in place and my eyes averted, and hoping that conveys “I respect your privacy” not “I’m afraid to look at you.” I really don’t want to give Seven reason to feel bad about herself.
When we’re finished and I’ve walked her to the shower, Seven does something that surprises me. She strips off her towel and her underwear, revealing a stained Depends pad, shoves the towel at me and hops into the shower. I dart out, closing the door as quickly as I can, and I remember how last time, she stripped off in front of me without blinking an eye. Maybe she’s just that comfortable with her body. Maybe she’s the type of person who overcompensates when they’re uncomfortable, and would rather just act like she’s okay than wait for me to guide her into the shower and have her pass the towel back, which is how we’ve been trained to do it so the client never actually has to be completely naked in front of us.
But when she’s dressed and heading out to pay, Seven makes a point to tell me that I unclasped the wrong part of her charm bracelet when I took it off for her at the beginning of the service. I apologize and ask if she wants help doing it back up.
“Why would I want you to do that?” she says in a suddenly harsh voice. “You don’t know how I like my jewelry. Just give it back right now.”
I do, feeling like the maid who’s been caught in the silver drawer. And it occurs to me that there’s another option: Maybe she’s fine being naked in front of me because she’s paying to be fine with it; she’s not supposed to have to worry about what someone in a service position thinks of her.
It’s probably a combination of all these things. When you try to work money into the youth/beauty hierarchy, the math gets tricky. Seven probably feels the power of her position as The Paying Customer and the insecurity of her body all at the same time.
She tips me $5 on a $34 service. And she’s the first client who doesn’t fold up the money first. Instead she lays the five dollar bill flat down on the counter between us and I’m the one who quickly folds it up and tucks it away.
Tip Jar Total = $48
Virginia,
Can I just tell you that I am so thoroughly enjoying your posts? Today, I laughed from beginning to end and wanted to comment in a clever and witty way but you’ve covered it all!
Honestly… I would like to “tip” you for services rendered in writing this!
Keep up the thoughtful and entertaining insight!
Sometimes I hope that these companies have their heart in the right place. Trying to show little girls that they can be beautiful no matter what “problem” they may have. But what I fear is that young girls that see these types of things, try the products and when they don’t work out for them, they lose even more self esteem. We need to teach good health as a way to beauty.
I just recently found your site and have been reading it all day, from todays post up until here! You’ve kept me so entertained, I’m loving every single one of your posts, my long and boring day at work has been passing by so quickly, THANK YOU!
I hopped on your blog after listening to an NPR interview you did on Mary Kay and have thoroughly enjoyed reading your past Beauty U pieces. You are a gifted storyteller and I hope you turn these experiences into a book — I’d love to share it with some of my friends in my book group.
I did want to comment on your ideas regarding Seven, however. I think it is very likely that Seven really has learned not to care about our culture’s beauty standards. She’s old and she’s not getting any younger. The human body is amazing, even with its wrinkles and flaws. If you’ve been able to do what you feel like are important things with your body and health, it really does make you less self-conscious. For example, I’ve had nine kids (yes, truly, nine and yes, I CHOSE that crazy lifestyle and chose a man who wants to live it with me) and I have a stomach full of stretchmarks to prove it. They really and truly don’t bother me — I think of them as a badge of honor for what I went through to get each one of my children. I also had an extra 60 lbs. hanging around, though in the last two years, I’ve been able to exercise, eat right, and lose most of that extra weight. The interesting thing to me is that while the stretch marks never bother me, the extra weight did. I never thought I was ugly or undesirable or that I was less valuable as a person because I was overweight, but I did feel it cut into my energy levels and my health and I knew I needed to do something about it. I took up running and even ran a marathon and became even more amazed at the capacity of the human body.
A few years ago, my husband’s almost-90-year-old grandmother was moved to assisted living near our home and I spent six months tending to her every night, helping her change her clothes, go to the bathroom and adjusting her body just right as she settled into bed. I count those hours spent with her as an amazing privilege. This is a woman who lived through the Great Depression and two world wars. She knew poverty and heartache, widowhood and loneliness. She ached to have children and was able to have just one. The extra folds of skin and the lines and wrinkles, more than anything else, shares with the world around her the fact that she’s LIVED — really and truly lived.
I guess that experience, along with the joy of being a mother to little ones with perfect skin, gives me the perspective not to really care that much about outward beauty. If we live long enough, we’ll all look a bit like Seven, no matter how much anti-aging make-up we buy from Mary Kaye or how many marathons we run. =)