Eat
My Feet

This post is for all the guys, real and
virtual, who have ever said they want to kiss, lick, bite, tickle, rub, suck, wash,
or eat my feet. Gentlemen, be my guest. I have THE most disgusting feet on the
planet. Dancer’s feet. There’s years
of ballet and belly dance under those things. (There’s some men under there
too! :O ). Actually, they’re more like tools than feet. I have hammer toes, ingrown
toenails, calluses, corns, blisters, open wounds, broken bones, premature
Arthritis, dead skin, and permanently blackened heels. Bunions run in my
family. I walk and dance barefoot on surfaces you wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot
pole. My feet are so gross even the podiatrist grimaces when I take my shoes
off. In fact, they’re so untamable, I’ve
given up on them. I no longer bother painting my toenails. That would be like
putting lipstick on the proverbial pig. Besides, 90 percent of the nail polish
disappears after just one show. I don’t clip my toenails either, but then
again, they never seem to grow past a certain point. Hah! They probably get
filed down from all the friction that occurs when I dance on wood and concrete
surfaces. I still clean them every so often, although it doesn’t really make a
difference. They just get dirty again. lol

I make up for the nastiness of my feet by
keeping a nice manicure. One inch glue-on talons by Kiss, Sally Hansen, and
Broadway. They don’t sell them in Egypt, so I replenish my stock whenever I go
back to the US for a visit. I buy six or seven boxes, which last me around six
months. Glue-on nails may not be the healthiest thing, but I love the length
they give my short, stumpy fingers.

The last time I went shopping for glue-on
nails at CVS, I came across a rack of glue-on toenails.  Imagine that. You can actually give yourself
an instant glue-on pedicure! For a minute, I thought they would be the perfect
solution to my unsightly feet. But I decided against it in the end—I’m pretty
sure they haven’t come out with hammer toe-shaped plastic toenails yet. And,
judging by what happens with my glue-on finger nails, I just know those fake
toenails would pop off while I’m dancing and land in some poor person’s plate.

There was
one time when glue-on toenails probably would have served me well, however. It
was after a show I did at the upper-crust, membership-only Cairo Automobile Club
(nadee il-sayaraat). The man who hired me, who was well into his eighties,
decided to give me some feedback after my performance, as good Egyptian
audience members always do. 🙂 He said everything about my show was berrfect
except for one thing. “Za nail on your big finger (he meant big toe)
is too short. You need to make it long and pointy, like za classy Oriental ladies
zay do it.”  

Oh. My. The old man just told me to grow
some long, pointy-ass toe nails!  >*D 

“But…. WHY?”
I asked him. 

“Because here in Eeejibt, a lady will
not be respected if she does not have a long finger nai (toe nails). Za
beeoble will say she is of za lower class. I am sorry, but you don’t want
anybody to say about you that you are sharmoota (prostitute). So
for the nekist barty inshallah you will make your finger nails (toenails)
long.”

!!!

Wait. 

What does toenail length have to do with people
thinking I’m a prostitute? If anyone thinks that about me, it is because I’m a
belly dancer, not because my big toe nails are “short.”

And then I responded. “You know, back where
I come from, it’s the complete opposite. Long, pointy toe nails are considered low
class. Besides, I don’t think that would be too comfortable.”

As usual, I was getting nowhere with this
conversation. But oh well, you know what they say.  Customer’s always right.

Now that I think of it, though, I believe the
man may have had a point (pun intended). I have
seen quite a few pointy toenails on women since moving here. I just never knew
it was intentional, or that it was a status symbol. It was one of those things
I would see and be like, okaaay, and then move on to thinking about more
important stuff. Like pointy pinky fingernails (and I do mean fingernails). Indeed, one of the strangest things about
Egypt is the phenomenon of the long pinky fingernail on men’s hands. If you
examine the hands of many Egyptian men, you will find that they have at least
one very long pinky fingernail. They keep all of their other nails short,
except for that pinky nail that jets out, kind of like a small switchblade. It
looks very pirate, and kind of reminds me of Captain Hook.

Now, I’ve never actually inquired into the
reason(s) behind the long pinky nail, but apparently it is widespread in East Asian
countries as well. So I just leave it up to my imagination. This is what I’ve
come up with so far: Tooth pick, nose pick, guitar pick, Q-Tip, letter opener,
weapon, teaspoon, coke spoon. Can you think of anything else?

No matter how I try to understand it, I don’t
think I’ll ever get the long pinky
nail. And it kind of irks me, especially when I see it on good looking guys. I
mean, who wants to imagine a hottie engaging his pinky nail in the ways I
described above? Definite deal breaker. On par with bad teeth, bad breath, and
my bad feet.

Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure that if
more men saw my feet, they would think twice about harassing me or trying to
pick me up. Especially if they saw my feet right after I finish a show.  My feet are all sorts of dirty when I finish dancing
barefoot. And since I usually have to run off to a gig somewhere else, there is
no time for me to wash them. So I just slip them back into my socks, or sandals
if it’s summer, and go about my merry way. Both the interior of my socks and
the insides of my wooden sandals get black really fast, and I wind up having to
scrub the life out of them when I get home. I have a special sponge for that
too. There’s no way I’d use the same sponge on my body that I use on my feet. Not
even if I wash the foot sponge before using it on my body. 

Because feet have the potential to get
very dirty (especially in Egypt), it is considered highly insulting if you sit
with your legs crossed and the bottoms of your feet are facing someone. If you
do that, you might as well have insulted that person’s mother. You’ve basically
just communicated to them that they are as dirty and low as your feet. Shoes
are also insulting in this part of the world. Hence the famous shoe-fling at
George Bush in Iraq a while back. I’m sure we all remember that. Though no one
in the US would bat an eye if you called them a “son of a shoe,” this is a huge
insult here. As is calling someone an actual shoe. It gets worse it if involves
flip-flops. Shib-shib in Egyptian
Arabic. Saying you want to hit someone over the head with your shib-shib will get them really angry.

I have to say, I never appreciated how
insulting feet and shoes could be until I came to terms with how disgusting
mine are. It would be plain rude for me to let anyone look at my feet, let
alone put them in their mouths. Just as rude as all the creepy so-called men
out there who share their nasty foot fetish fantasies with me. Too bad I’m never rude. Otherwise, I’d let them have
their way.