If there’s anything ugly about me, it’s my feet. I mean, OK, if there’s anything not DROP-DEAD insanely beautiful and mesermizing and glittery and magical about my body, it’s my feet.
I think its genetics. There must be a hobbit somewhere back in the Kreighbaum lineage. Kreeg-bawm just sounds like a troll, or at least a hole-dweller's surname, doesn’t it? I’ve never been OK with it until my intern told me that it sounds like a weird supermodel name. That was last night. I’ve started accepting my last name as of just last night.
So, yah, my troll feet. They’re wide and weird and completely calloused after a short lifetime of irresponsible parenting that left me running barefoot on way-too-effing-hot Texas concrete. The calluses on my big toes added millimeters to the width of my feet, like freaking benign TUMORS jutting out.
But other than that, and the occasional open sores that I paid Mr. Wang and the Sirs at Gucci Group an insane amount of money for, they’ve stayed pretty pretty compared to what they could look like, and what I've been trying to avoid as I enter adulthood.
I went to the same elementary school for six years and literally my only memory of my time spent there is my 6th grade teacher’s vom-inducing crackled heels. She wore mules and put her neon pink-clawed feet up on her desk while we worked, the jagged crevices staring the class in the face all like, “Look at them, children. LOOK AT THEM.”
Since then I’ve been doing lots of at-home pedicure-type stuff. Manicures, pedicures, waxing, etc.--I do most of this myself. Mostly because I’m better at them than almost every technician I’ve seen and even more mostly because I didn’t get invited to a lot of social gatherings during my adolescent years.
Excuse the hyperbole--it totally UNDERSCORES MY EXPERTISE on the issue--but I’ve tried, like, EVERY sort of pumice and foot exfoliator on the market. ON THE MARKET. That’s industry speak for whatever’s at Target or Duane Reed or that comes in one of those lame-ass “spa kits” that are sold in bulk in various shades of pastels at the mass chain retailers, so please don’t shove them on me, feigning an attempt at gifting.
I was convinced that none of them really made a difference. I mean, sure, they probably softened my already soft arch skin, but I’m pretty sure that my toe calluses were wearing away at the pumice instead of vice versa.
Then, on a whim (because it was purple), I bought a Mr. Pumice bar at Sally Beauty Supply on West Anderson Lane in Austin, Texas. It’s like taking industrial-strength sandpaper to your feet. Seriously, be careful, you can and will be able to scrub off your calluses entirely, revealing fresh, sensitive skin underneath. Maybe you’ll even draw blood! As with more beauty implements, that’s how you know it’s working.
Joooooking. For real, don’t scrub too hard because this thing will basically remove body parts. I like the two-sided bar; one side is next-level course for extra-gnarly callus removal. Although even the regular-level course side will get you better results than those lame-ass spongey-looking stone pumices, which will from now on be referred to as pretenders.
So get thee to Sally because, seriously, you’d have to think of a reason NOT to go to Sally, right? It’s the best place ever. And totally buy a Mr. Pumice bar. It’s less than a coffee and also most everything else that you buy.