The Best Way to Spend a Snow Day in New York

Although it appears that most everyone spent yesterday afternoon stocking up on rock salt, water bottles and snow storm necessities, I, and myriad women of New York, stocked up on other “necessities.” With lingering fears that 12 to 14 inches of snow would shut down the city, my Blackberry calendar was reorganized, phone calls were made and plans were shifted. Beauty day needed a new day and that day was upon me.

Perhaps you are unaware, but beauty day is a time honored ritual for most women. Many women have at least one carved into their social agenda — some variation on manicure/pedicure, eyebrow wax, spin class at Equniox and balayage highlights at Frederic Fekkai. As someone who strives to remain in the know, I can say with resounding affirmation that our weekly to-do lists are slightly overwhelming, financially draining and seemingly ceaseless; beauty day in this city is a 26.2 mile marathon, not a 100-yard dash.

It was around 3:30 p.m. when I hit the streets, frantic to heal my most pressing beauty woes before being stranded in my Jimmy Choo’s. Stop number one was the not-so-hidden gem in Midtown, Ebenezer Eyelash Extension. Up until a few months ago this was not a mile marker on my beauty marathon; now however these Korean eyelash gurus are the GU that sustains me during my race. I arrived to a packed salon of my peers lying in bliss, being serenaded by Beethoven and having their 10s, 11s and 12s put on, extra thick no less. Countless salons in the city provide this service, and every woman and her grandmother (yes I said it, grandmother) can be found donning these lashes. Don’t believe me? Next time you are in an elevator, peer over at the lashes of the woman standing next to you. Are they thick? Long? Lustrous? Chances are they are synthetic and were done at Ebenezer.

One hour later and 13.2 miles in, I pressed on for the Holy Grail of services, the manicure/pedicure. The perfect manicure trumps most everything in my mind, and finding your manicurist in a sea of more than 2,300 New York salons is almost as noteworthy as splitting the atom. I ventured uptown for my treatments, to a little slice of heaven also known as the spa on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental. The epitome of luxury and service, this spa boasts of Best Rigorous Pedicure and Top 5 Couples Splurges, to name a few. A necessary stop on the beauty train, I disembarked at Columbus Circle and reveled in merriment until the snow began to fall on my beautiful beauty day.

As life continues on today with sufficiently less snow then planned, I think about my fellow women of the Big Apple as they “lace up” their Jimmy Choo Uggs ready to complete their own beauty marathons. It is safe to say that much like the members of the Parcel Service, “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night strays [w]e [beauty] couriers from the swift completion of [ou]r appointed rounds”.

“Some days are for cultivating the mind, others are for cultivating the body. Mens sana in corpore sano. Healthy mind in a healthy body. Mens sana in corpore bellus. Healthy mind in a beautiful body.”

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