The FISH PEDICURE comes to Aspen Hill

Would you pay money to have a bunch of fish gnaw away at the dead skin on your feet? I heard there was a place in Alexandria that you could go to for this exciting beauty treatment. And now it's available in northwest Silver Spring, in the Aspen Hill shopping center right next to Panera.

click on the picture to see the fishies nibbling on the footsies

I have to admit I am somewhat intrigued by this method of exfoliation. I've imagined my feet in the water with all the little fish in there nibbling away. I like being nibbled upon and always have. When I was in second grade my class had a pet mouse or hamster, or maybe it was a guinea pig, in a cage. One day I stuck my finger in there and he came over and started ever so gently chewing on my finger. "Oooh, he must really like me!" I thought. It didn't hurt at all - I kind of enjoyed how it felt. I was really feeling the love. This went on for about five minutes when all of a sudden my finger started bleeding a little bit.

I got yelled at by my teacher and by my parents and I had to get a tetanus shot - they decided to take their chances with the rabies apparently, because they told me "If he has rabies you are going to die." And I had this vision of myself loping down the street foaming at the mouth like that dog in "To Kill a Mockingbird" and falling down dead next to the curb. Fortunately the cute little whatever-it-was rodent did not have rabies.

So I'm imagining this fish treatment, which I first heard about from a friend who really wanted to do it, and I was thinking that it might feel kind of good to be chewed on by a whole bunch of little critters instead of just one. I was kind of getting off on the idea. Do I have a "getting nibbled" fetish maybe? I've definitely had some good nibbling experiences. The whole mouse thing was absolutely worth it, in spite of everything.

All of a sudden, just as I was taking this picture, an old hippie-looking dude with long gray hair and an army jacket walked by and "the fish are great but the fumes are unbearable - it smells like a glue factory in there." Was he speaking from experience? Hmmm.....

Okay I definitely do not want to be chewed on by a bunch of fish who may have been chewing on that guy's toes earlier in the day. That's disgusting. That's how diseases are spread. Who would voluntarily engage in such an unsanitary activity - even if they changed the water, it's still gross. Do they rinse off the fish in between treatments? I only want super clean fish chewing on me.

How did they come up with this anyway? Why would the fish want to eat dead skin off of my feet? How do they know which skin is dead? If you keep your feet in there long enough will they chew all the way through to the live skin? Will they keep chewing after you start bleeding? Maybe that's their goal. Why are these fish so desparately hungry that they'll eat dead skin from feet? Do they starve them poor fishes? If they're not hungry do you still have to pay? I don't like the idea that they'd try to get the fishes hungry enough to eat dead human feet skin. That's not very nice at all.

Do you know anyone who has had this foot treatment? I think I've talked myself out of it, mostly because of the germ factor. To me this is one potentially delightful sensation that is definitely not worth experiencing.

On a less disgusting note, tonight's sunset was rather pleasant!

UPDATE: Commenter #13 wrote an absolutely fabulous post last fall about his fish pedicure. Follow this link - it is both insightful and entertaining. Also, it seems that some states are now beginning to ban the fish pedicure, including Texas, Washington state, and New Hampshire.