Grooming and ornamenting the self ground us to earth. By sharing the intimacies of a dressing room, the rituals of manicures and pedicures, facials and massages, sometimes making "small talk," complaining about our lives, telling our stories, or revealing our dreams, we can experience a kind of tender attention, outside our daily routines. We are tended and soothed, polished, sometimes purified.
— J. Ruth Gendler, Notes on the Need for Beauty