This is a post from ByJane, circa early Spring 2007.  I’m reposting it as an hommage to Jessica Gottlieb’s recent musings about French Pedicures.

I know it’s still winter in the rest of the United States, but here in California we’re already wearin’ our flipflops. Thus, I have been treated to the proliferation of a trend that I hoped would die out last year: The French Pedicure.

It is derived, I do believe, from The French Manicure, in which the nailbed is polished pink and the nail tips are polished white. This is meant to simulate an unpolished, natural nail, and why that is so oolala French, I haven’t a clue. It can be relatively attractive on those who have nicely shaped oval nails. It is less so, far less so if you ask me, when it is worn by women with short chunky fingers. It’s pretty gross, however, when the nails are long and square and more suitable for opening chickenfeed sacks (or, so I’m told, snorting blow).

The French Pedicure, then, is the same technique applied to the toenails. It is never relatively attractive; it is always more or less gross. It simulates not ladylike toes, sweetly clean and pink, but Jesus-freaky digits, great horny things that scream FILTH, TOE CHEESE, CRUD UNDER THE NAILS.

The problem is that white stripe at the end of the nail. On toes, it is by definition, always too long. Toe nails may be keratin on digits, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same as fingernails. They are not. They are on toes. Which are on feet. Which are on the floor, dirt, ground, rooted in the earth, bearers of bunions and corns and–oy vey!–athlete’s foot, ring worm, and other assorted fungii.

Toe nails should not be long and luxurious. Unlike fingernails which can signify a Lady of Leisure, long toenails simply signify Bum or, at the very least, Personal Hygiene Retard.

Is that the image you want for your feet?