This past year hasn’t been easy for anyone, and it’s important for your mental health to sometimes just remove yourself from all the chaos and stress and find little ways to bring joy into your life. If you need some inspiration, here’s a story of someone who’s discovering the therapeutic power of shutting out external distractions and focusing your energy on your own wellbeing: this woman is enjoying her pedicure too much to be bothered by the very obvious human trafficking situation going on in the nail salon.
Yes! Treat yourself, girl!
Thirty-three-year-old Brittany McMaster is currently putting on a master class on how to do self-care right, as she is so blissed out getting a pedicure at Fantasy Nails in Richmond, Virginia, that she hasn’t even noticed how the establishment seems to be run entirely by exhausted, poorly compensated indentured servants, some whom appear to be underage! When Brittany walked into the fluorescent-lit nail salon and smelled the heavy, toxic fumes hanging in the air, she was ready to take a load off, and she wasted no time asking the 13-year-old boy at the front desk to get her an appointment for relaxation, STAT. And now that she’s in the pedicure chair, all her work stress, family stress, and regular old pandemic stress is just melting away, so much so that she isn’t bothered in the slightest that the elderly woman hunched over her feet keeps taking breaks to sigh loudly and let out a bunch of wet-sounding coughs.
Wow! Way to make time for yourself, Brittany!
Since Brittany got to the salon, multiple employees have been seen walking to the back with their cash tips and handing them over to an angry man who seems to be the salon’s owner, but this isn’t messing up Brittany’s mood in the slightest. Rather than let herself fall into a spiral of worry over whether these women are being exploited, she’s instead chosen to just sit back, close her eyes, and feel all her worries melt away as the massage chair gently kneads her knotted muscles.
It would probably totally bum Brittany out if she were to dwell on the fact that you can see a cot in the backroom of the salon that employees presumably sleep on due to not being able to afford housing, but she is simply too caught up in the pleasure of the gentle foot rub that her nail technician is giving her to be bothered by any of the troubles of the world. She also does not seem to have noticed that all of the workers in the salon are clearly immigrants from the same Southeast Asian country with an appalling human rights record, which is certainly not just a happy coincidence. She’s just feeling too rejuvenated by her new lavender toenails to worry about whether any of the employees at the salon are trapped in a cycle of modern-day slavery, and her mental health is all the better for it.
Nice!
Clearly, Brittany understands that self-care is healthcare, and she is proving just how necessary it is to regularly make time for yourself and focus on your own needs instead of all the unfortunate realities of life. Enjoy the pedicure, Brittany—you are worth it!
