Carte blanche to Mariana Mazza | Ladies who go fast

With their unique pen and their own sensitivity, artists present to us their vision of the world around us. This week, we give carte blanche to comedian Mariana Mazza.

I always bit my nails until they bled. Out of anxiety, out of habit. My mother kept telling me that it was ugly and that it didn’t look feminine. I promised myself every day to stop. Tomorrow will be my last gnawing session. OK no, tomorrow. OK, it’s definitely tomorrow. And ultimately, I never stopped. Until the day I started to feel ashamed watching myself on television. Beautiful hair, beautiful makeup, beautiful clothes, crappy hands. Overnight, I stopped. As if I had experienced post-traumatic shock. I didn’t want to have deformed fingers anymore.

And that’s when I started going to beauty salons. In other words, I started going to see Asian ladies who do nails. That’s what they’re called. Asian ladies who speak half-English, half-French and who, among themselves, speak in their language. Since we don’t understand anything, we always have the impression that they are talking behind our backs and making fun of our disgusting hands. I love these ladies.

They have a mission: to do our nails as quickly as possible so that we quickly find ourselves beautiful and so that they can quickly get another client. It’s a manicure sausage factory. They’re always in a hurry, they always look angry, and they’re obsessed with what color we’re going to choose for our nails. You don’t have time to sit down and choose the color you’re going to put on your fingers. “Which color?” » Well I don’t know. Wait a bit. I want to take my time, relax, relax. But it’s not a spa, their job is to get as many customers as possible because that’s how they were trained. I like it the same.

I like it when things go fast. I don’t like to chat and create a connection. I hate making myself facials and get a massage because I always end up feeling bad for not keeping the conversation going. Silence, sometimes, feels good. And that’s what I look for in the ladies who do my nails.

Getting my nails done is my solo activity with myself. It’s a short hour where I can do nothing but stare at the machine that removes my old nail polish, smell the chemicals that make me dizzy, and follow the madam’s orders like an automaton.

The best moment is when they offer to do a pedicure. You sit down on a large leather armchair that could have belonged to your grandfather in the 1950s and, without warning, the lady presses the lever stuck to the armrest and it begins to vibrate as if you had just hit the shoulder lane on the highway. You never know if you like it or not, but you eventually get used to the violence that this ordinary seat can do to your back and neck. It’s better than any massage you’re going to pay $200 for for an hour. For an hour, you feel like someone is breaking your lower spine while the lady, with spectacular concentration, puts nail polish on you without it sticking out a single millimeter. It fascinates me. It seems that even during an earthquake, she would be able to do an impeccable job while you, even concentrated in the calmest and most stable environment, are not capable of giving yourself a coat of varnish without having the You think you have Parkinson’s.

I admire them, the Asian ladies who do their nails. They work from morning to evening in a place where they can interact with each other, in complete confidentiality because no one understands them. They are never late for the appointment they have set with their clients. They carry out the work surgically without wasting time. Every second is used to complete the requested task. I, the ladies who do nails, admire them and I love them. And even if I will never understand them, I dream that one day, secretly, someone will invent an earpiece with a live translator who translates to me the interactions they have with each other. I am convinced that another world would open up to us. Admit that you too have already said that to yourself!