Monday, August 1, 2011

"NAY, HER FOOT SPEAKS!" (Wm Shakespeare)

A silly topic, this. But consider it for a moment: when you are very little, you don't think about the appearance of your body parts. You don't look at your little fingers or your little toes and declare that they are ugly. You are simply delighted that they work -- that you can pick things up and put things down and walk or run or kick. Well, when you're old, it's pretty much the same thing.

Somewhere in between, things fall apart. Other voices interfere. I studied dance for many, many years. I was quite young when I started; first in the ballet and later, modern dance with members of Martha Graham's company. I was probably seven years old when I shed my dance slippers to dance barefoot. In all the scores of years, no teacher, choreographer, class mate, colleague, ever remarked about my feet. Except to tell me to point or flex! So you can imagine my dismay when -- in my early teens -- an elderly gentleman friend of my grandpa referred to the "unfortunate shape of my toes." I was devastated. My mother and my grandmother contributed two consoling facts: that my feet closely resembled theirs; and that the man was NOT a gentleman to have said such a thing. None of that helped. For a long while, I wouldn't wear sandals or strappy shoes. I didn't go barefoot. Except in the dance studio where I became other.


In college the problem faded a bit or I didn't think much about it. When I went to school in England I wore sandals the entire summer. Europeans seemed to not care; they seemed to notice the positive attributes and didn't go bananas over extremities.

Well, I married too soon out of college. Because we were in theatre, we had many glamourous friends. Out-spoken glamourous friends. There was, for example, an evening when all of the men who gathered around our table discussed how lovely feet on women were a great attraction. Or homely feet were a big turn-off. So I put on my shoes (which I've never worn in my home) and took to wearing closed-toe espadrilles every summer. The lack of self-confidence is a very powerful malady. Of course it doesn't help when people are stupidly cruel. There was an evening when a younger relation, seemingly out of nowhere, began to exclaim with a great deal enjoyment: " Your feet are UGLY! UGLY!!! UUUUUGGGGLY!" At the time I blamed it on the wine. I believe I responded with something like -- "happily I have two of them and they work." She continued her tirade for a while. Fortunately I had to leave because I had a plane to catch. The next week I visited a friend who was also my hair dresser. A woman was having a pedicure near to my friend's work station. "Oh, I'd love to do that. It looks so relaxing." "Why don't you? " he asked me. And I went into my story about how uuuuggggly! my feet are. "Just do it, buy a pair of sandals and forget about it!" he said. "And if that doesn't help, start looking at everyone's feet for a day or two. Let me know if you find someone with pretty feet. Magazine models don't count."

He was, of course, absolutely right. My feet looked better and better as the day wore on. And so I went to have my first pedicure. It wasn't something my mother ever did; my grandmother had one before a big family event so she could have fresh polish on her nails. In other words, it had never been part of my experience. I've been going for pedicures ever since. Sure my toes looked better; but it's the leg and foot massage that closes the deal. When I mentioned to the manicurist (in apology?) that my feet were unattractive, she responded; "You have no idea what unattractive is. There's nothing wrong with your feet."

I am at the age where women in this country become invisible. That's also the same age when women take for their own the anthem of the 'It" girl of the twenties: "I don't care...I don't care..." It's very liberating. It's all the same thing: the nose you don't like; the hair that isn't as lovely as the wig (usually is, you know) that the TV actress is sporting. We can always find a way to feel deficient. We are who we are; be ever grateful when everything is in working order.

My son told me a clever quote (I don't know where it's from): "If you doubt that God has a sense of humor, just look at people's feet." 'Nuf said.