A Wedding, a Graduation, and a Great Big Show (Part 1)

It's been quite a weekend!

Friday was full of preparation activities for the wedding, consisting of
manicures and pedicures, rehearsal, and rehearsal dinner. If memory serves
me, this was my second time getting a manicure and pedicure at a salon (the
first time was when a woman I was a teaching assistant for treated us
both to a spa day, complete with full massage).

As much as I enjoyed it, I can’t say that I’ll ever make it a habit—the least of the reasons being that I couldn’t imagine regularly spending the money. Frankly, I’d rather use that money to support my current tastes for beer and coffee. Then again, it all fits into my usual modus operandi when it comes to how well I keep myself…

I own a pair of clippers which I use to shave my own head even though I’d probably look more stylish if I went to the barber regularly. I wear glasses instead of contacts. My shoes are over a year old, the soles are visibly worn, but I take the time to shine them whenever I can.

My grooming habits aside…the whole mani/pedi experience was uncomfortable in part because it’s an intimate service to have someone else provide. (I think I’d feel the same way about certain medical care, too.) Compounding this discomfort with intimacy was the obvious racial dynamics. All the employees at this salon were Asian, and all the clients except for me were white. But really, this wasn’t just about race, it was about class/money. It was about the way in which service and money were flowing from whites to people of color, again, except for me.

It’s this position as the exception that is another source of discomfort. But, it’s not that I experience discomfort by being an outsider here—rather, the discomfort lies in feeling as if I’m not aligned with my “fellow” people of color. (I think this is the main source of my discomfort in my program, too, where people of color abound, but with whom I don’t share similar experiences of racialization, and so feel out of alignment.)

I still haven’t figured out a good solution to this predicament. In fact, it’s probably one of the reasons why I’ve tended to be friends with lots of people but not have a big group of friends...