I hate Manicure Mondays (long and sniveling)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I am surrounded by an expatriate American housewife subculture that sometimes makes me feel like an unhappy misfit.

Many of my peers (American women living in Egypt with children in school, here because of their husband’s job) have more free time than their counterparts in the US. This extra free time is primarily for two reasons: first, we all have maids who relieve us of much of the burden of housekeeping and childcare; and second, while it is not impossible to find gainful employment here as a “trailing spouse” foreigner, it is quite difficult.

We all find ways to stay busy. I personally do have gainful employment; I also like to exercise, read, play the piano, cook, and – naturally – participate in the SDMB.

But there is huge subculture of self-pampering here that depresses the hell out of me, and I don’t know why. A perfect example is “Manicure Mondays,” a service at the local center for expat women. I don’t know exactly how it works, because I wouldn’t be caught dead there, but I gather that every Monday for a small price you can sit with other expat ladies, have your nails done, have coffee and pastries, and chit-chat. Similarly, there is a very well developed service industry here that caters to well-off women. At-home pedicures, waxing, massage, and Og only knows what else are plentiful, and my friends spend quite a bit of time talking about bikini waxing, hair coloring, and so on.

Why does this bother me so much? I suppose in part because I feel like a socially inept weirdo when I am around hair removal discussions; I simply do not get why people would voluntarily expand the amount of time and energy they spend on trivial grooming rituals. I also hate the fact that a year or two ago, I organized a bunch of people to provide free lunches to teachers and children at a refugee school once a month, but had to give it up because it was too much work to do by myself and all of my friends were too busy to help much.

I am not claiming moral superiority just because I’d rather read the SDMB than have my nails done – it’s hard to see how one is better than the other. Besides, many of the women I know read a lot of books, take music lessons, and engage in activities that keep their brain cells active. Even if it were my business to pass judgment on what they choose to do with their time, which it most certainly isn’t, I would admire many of the efforts that they make.

So there is no reason whatsoever for me to mind manicure Mondays. But I do mind them.

I wish I didn’t.

2

I know exactly what you mean. As an expat NGO worker, I have made a hobby of being offended by the habits of the expat spouses of the for profit people. My advice? Make friends with locals.

3

Well, I’m an American woman, living in the US, and I still don’t get the concept of regular manicures. Maybe that’s just me.

I’m judging strictly on your username that you have a pretty deep connection with Egypt and are expat but rooted there for a while. Are these other expat wives in that situation? Depending on why their husbands are there, they may figure that there’s not much point in getting involved in the local scene, since they’ll just have to move again anyway. Since they’re not employed, they probably either a) can’t be for some reason or; b) were pretty much expecting to live on their husband’s salary anyway.

I think the little culture you’re seeing exists in just about anyplace you go but it’s much more obvious to you because of the geographic and linguistic isolation. (Not yours, theirs.) And even in the US it’s still sometimes hard to get people out for “useful” activities, even when it seems like they should have the money and time.

That all said, I’d probably say exactly the same thing in your shoes. And if I got something totally wrong, I’m sorry. Let me know.

4

Thank you **madmonk28 ** and **MerryMagdalen ** for making me feel like I am not the only female in the world who doesn’t love manicures.

Making friends with the locals is always a good suggestion, though I shamefacedly confess not to have done it here on a really deep level – the linguistic and cultural barriers are pretty tough. (I was much more involved in local culture when I was in Indonesia, since I speak the language.)

MerryMagdalen, don’t worry about being right or wrong in your surmises; not everything you said is precisely correct in my case but you have the right overall idea. I’m not that wedded to Egypt per se, but I am a career expat, so I don’t regard my time here as an aberration; some of my friends (not all) probably do see their time here as something of a “time out” from the real world, so that may explain some of the fixation on pampering.

Anyway it helps to give me a healthier perspective if I try to think of it in those terms.

5

I’m not much of a girly girl, but a few years ago I was getting regular manicures. It was really very nice, I was shocked by how much pride I took in my nails. The colors were fun, the manicure itself was a mini pamper. I’m not saying “go out and do this” but everyone treats themselves to something and manicures are one of the things a lot of women enjoy (I don’t get the shoe thing - but I do get the manicure thing).

Add to that these women being “out of their element” with a lot of time on their hands and looking for reasons to get together and be social, and the manicure becomes an excuse to get together and talk about husbands and kids and American Idol.

As to the self pampering, there are very few benefits to these women to being expat wives. They are away from their families and friends. In a culture that probably isn’t comfortable to most of them. Women seeing this as an adventure probably don’t need to be waxed and pampered - but I’m guessing for a lot of women, Egypt is scary and stays scary their entire stay. One of its few benefits (for them) is that they are able to afford to treat themselves in ways they couldn’t afford Stateside.

6

Also, the spa industry (the manicure-industrial complex, if you will) has really taken off in the US recently. If you haven’t lived in the US for a while, this may have snuck up on you. I personally don’t enjoy it, but I see spas and manicure places on every corner here, and the advertising is omnipresent. Excess body and facial hair have been essentially criminalized, and the definition of excess seems to be growing. So to the extent these women are plugged into US media and marketing, they’re just “fortunate” enough to be able to keep up.

7

First, thanks for the comments, Dangerosa. Anything that helps me get a rational perspective is good - your post does that.

That is not the case, however. We do have stresses, for sure, but boy, do we have compensations:

  1. Our husbands make tons of money, taxed at a lower rate than it would be if we lived in the US

  2. We have maids, cooks, gardeners, drivers – whatever help we want.

  3. If I don’t want to cook dinner, all I have to do is pick up the phone: virtually every restaurant here, from McDonald’s to nice Thai or German or Indian, delivers at a very reasonable price.

  4. Everything else is delivered as well, such as phone bills and groceries (I can shop in person, or just pick up the phone and order – either way someone will bring what I buy into my kitchen for me).

  5. Tuition for a very fine school is covered as a standard part of the expat package.

  6. Every summer we get to go home to see family, with most of the cost of the airfare covered by employers.

…there is more, but you get the idea.

We’re pretty pampered even before the manicures start!

8

I think everyone has a way they relax - I wouldn’t be caught dead getting a manicure, but I’d spend money on riding lessons, for example. There’s nothing wrong with spending your money on something that makes you happy/feel good. Think of it this way - all those indulgent women are helping the local economy when they have women in to provide these services, money the women and their families wouldn’t have if the expat wives went home.

Since servants are a given there, they probably don’t have much to do to fill their time, particularly with a language barrier. This is a safe, insular way for them to make the days pass. Many people aren’t comfortable outside their familiar worlds. People outside their enclaves, talk differently, look differently, smell differently. If you’re aren’t very secure and self-confident, it can be hard to break into another world, especially one so far removed from your own.

StG

9

This puts me in mind of something I was just thinking about. I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer and I’ve been in country for a little over a year now. Almost exactly a year ago, a girl in the group ahead of mine (ie, she was then where I am now, in country for a little over a year), told me that her Bulgarian had actually gotten worse since she finished training. “I never use it, because I only use English in the classroom,” she said. At the time, I didn’t really question that, but now I think of it and wonder WTF was she doing, then? How did she talk to her coworkers, or the people at the grocery store, or when her students’ parents wanted to talk to her? (Trust me, it is really, really unlikely that any of these people would be able to speak English.) And it’s not just her…it seems like a lot of volunteers I know leave work and hide at home to avoid catching Teh Bulgaria or something.

I realize I’m coming off as morally superior here, but it’s possible I’d do the same thing if I had a computer here, which I don’t. First time I’ve been grateful to be poor, I guess. Instead I end up reading in the park and chatting with whoever wanders by. (Yesterday it was a baba who wanted her granddaughter to sing the English song she’d learned in nursey school for me.)

As for Manicure Monday, I hate wearing polish on my fingernails, but oh god could I use a nice pedicure right about now.

10

Uh, actually, I’m a guy. I just don’t like expats :slight_smile:

11

CairoCarol, I’m not a manicure kind of gal myself. I get my hands too dirty with gardening and cooking to keep up finely polished nails. Having said that, none of the compensations you listed in the above post would ever make me consider leaving my family and home and moving to a totally foreign culture where I can’t find a job, don’t speak the language, am there purely because someone values my spouse’s work, *and *where women don’t seem to be as respected as they are in the U.S. I wonder if the pampering isn’t a form of self-medication in a way. It beats the pants off self-medicating with gin or Quaaludes.

12

I’m an ex-pat. If I had somewhere to go hang out with other ex-pats from my home country, I’d do it in a heartbeat even if it meant getting manicures each week. I’ll get one every six months or something as it is now.

As a total aside, my doctor father-in-law was in your town for tsunami relief awhile back.

13

I used to date a guy who spent a couple years working for the Associated Press in Africa.

He said the cultural isolation was the worst thing he experienced while there. Since he was single, he didn’t have any family there at all, and not a lot of contact with coworkers either due to his assignments. This was in the days before Internet and email, so really all he could do to reach out to someone who could relate was to write long letters to his sister and then wait for her to write back.

He wasn’t exactly the type of guy who was afraid to dive into the local culture either, including the rather more unsavory aspects of it, so it wasn’t like he didn’t have anything else to keep him busy.

I suspect that the Manicure Mondays are more about inventing a way to socialize with others who are in the same boat than they are about the manicures themselves.

14

I would say that is very few benefits. Basically:

Your husband makes money hand over fist
Luxuries are affordable.

If you have a sense of adventure, its really cool to be an expat (or an expat’s wife). However, I’m guessing for every wife who thinks its cool, three more wonder why their husband dragged them to this hellhole and they’d rather be living ten miles from their parents and all their friends.

15

I agree. It would be one thing to spend several years in, say, Norway or France for the sake of your husband’s career, but spending several years in Egypt or Saudi Arabia would really give me pause, and I have a sense of adventure. I bet a lot of these women are Ruths (“whither thou goest, I shall go”) who are clinging to something familiar in a very strange environment.

16

Sorry about the gender confusion, **madmonk28 ** - who woulda thunk a guy would even open a thread with the word “manicure” in it?

Anyway, all the comments above are very helpful. It’s especially interesting to see that several people don’t seem to think we are all that privileged just because of all the bennies we get. See, that would never occur to me, because I love living in foreign cultures and would live just about anywhere for a while, just to see what it was like. Apparently that makes me a bit odd – but then, we knew I was odd already, because of my piss-poor attitude toward manicures!

Thanks everyone. I shall try to be more understanding of my friends.

It’s still hard, but I’ll try.

17

It might help to remember that for some of these women, their sisters are having babies back home that they’ll get to see only a handful of times while they are little. There parents are aging. Their girlfriends are having troubles in their marriages. All the money, maid staff and manicures in the world aren’t going to help being halfway across the world from the people you love, if what you really want is to be with them.

And I agree burundi, a lot of these women are probably Ruths. I’ve had the opportunity to expat, so has my husband. Perhaps not serious opportunities, but the sort of “would you be interested” conversations. The only place we considered was Vancouver, and that was because I could work from home from Vancouver as easily as anyplace. Singapore he’d give up his job, Ireland, same. Bangalore (his opportunity) - I’d give up my job and we didn’t have a lot of desire to live in Bangalore. Yeah, he’d have made a lot of money, and the cost of living is cheap in Bangalore, but our parents aren’t getting younger and I don’t want to be halfway across the world from them.