A few days after the budget was handed down, I had an experience entirely new to me – watching an hour of commercial television on a Saturday morning. I was putting my mother-in-law on a flight to Launceston, there was a delay, we had spent all the time drinking coffee that we could and were plonked down in hard plastic chairs in the departure lounge, staring dazedly at the box.
The first thing we were subjected to was what I think they call a lifestyle show. Four heavily made up women with improbably glossy and coiffed hair were discussing one of life’s big questions – whether pedicures are a luxury or a necessity.
‘There’s trouble brewing in the suburbs,’ our lovely host introduced the segment, and went on to describe a young couple who were being forced to economise. He insisted that her pedicures were one thing they could cut from the weekly expense list; she was having none of it.
Well, they pondered and debated this deep dilemma for a while, these Stepford wives. They even had a podiatrist on the show who insisted that pedicures were not actually essential to life, to cries of dismay from the girls.
The happy ending to this story came when they taught the hubby (it was the kind of show where they used words like that) to give his beloved a foot massage – with the help of various products, needless to say. Peace in the suburbs was restored.
From here, we progressed to Dr Oz who, name notwithstanding, is American. He runs what appears to be basically a sales a show with a studio audience of fluttering and swooning women. The good doctor spruiked various products that performed such miracles as de-stressing you, or rendering your skin as smooth as that of someone ten years your junior. He got audience members - all with immaculate make up and eerily clone-like shining locks - to come up and try these, upon which they cooed with delight and burned with conviction that yes, these products (only $19.99 if you buy now!) did all they promised.
It was federal budget week; most people I know had spent four days fretting and fuming about the targeting of the sick, young, old and ill and these women were incensed about someone suggesting they do without their pedicures?
Where do they get these ladies? It was like a flashback to what I imagine some women discussed in the fifties. Are there women who get excited, outraged and rapturous about beauty products? Are there people who spend mornings watching this dross?
My mum-in-law and I admitted to each other that we’d survived thus far - 140 years between us - without ever having a pedicure. And then the flight was called and we tore ourselves away from Dr Oz.
I drove home from Tullamarine feeling as though I inhabit a parallel universe. Has the world gone mad? Or is it me who is the weirdo?