Ingenic nails, calluses, corns, lime nails or a magpie eye. The seventy-year-old Breda Pedicure Mimie Frèrejean-Emmen knows how to handle it. She has been living on feet for fifty years and she doesn’t want to stop. “Frunniken at feet, I just love.”
“Woohoo, don’t do it,” screams Netty (82) when pedicure Mimie takes care of the calluses under her foot. “This tickles so bad that I would even betray my family to stop it.”
Mimie Frèrejean-Emmen has to laugh very much about it. After fifty years as a pedicure, she is used to something. “She doesn’t like this, so I will stop for a moment,” she says, leaving Netty with a cup of coffee and a bonbon. The latter is a regular shot, because an appointment with Mimie is more than just a foot treatment. It also means cosiness and there is always a listening ear.
“You share sweet and sorrows and therefore have a bond with each other,” Mimie says about the relationship with her customers. “Together you experience a lot. It’s about the children, about the past or just about things we are experiencing. I am sometimes just a social worker, but I love doing it.”
“I couldn’t miss this work,” she continues. “I recently noticed that when I fell and there for nine weeks out. That hurt me such a sadness, because I missed the customers enormously. My profession is also my hobby.”
The coffee and the bonbon taste Netty fine. The ladies chat a lot and in the meantime Minie silently takes over her customer’s feet again. She really likes cosiness, but also her care task.
“I like to help people at good feet,” says Mimie. “Whether it is about ingrown toenails or the removal of calluses. Every foot is unique and has its own story. You also read health to it. You sometimes see the state of the heart at the blood vessels.”
After fifty years she has had thousands of feet. “Of course, some people have lime nails, but that is not dirty. Frunniken is just lovely. I give my customers advice and if they have been to me, they can take it again for six weeks. You help people to walk well and that is nice.”
That care and fascination for feet has been there from an early age. Mimie’s father had a shoe store in Breda and was also a pedicure. She took over his practice and also his task. And to this day is fully appreciated.
“Mimie has it in her fingers,” says customer Netty Molenschot, who is still in the treatment chair. “She is really doing her work perfectly and that’s why she has been full for fifty years. And I am 82, so I can know. But that is how everyone thinks about it.”
“I may continue to the age of 80.”
“But oh my God, sometimes she tickles me. At the bottom of my foot that is really a disaster. But that is really the only thing I don’t like, haha.”
Mimie is blushing. “I will be 71 soon, but I will definitely continue. Maybe until I was the age of 80. That depends on me, but my hands and eyes are still good.”
Netty notes that not much later at the closing foot massage with talcum powder. “Oh, stop,” it sounds Kirrend.