That's What She-She Said

After three man-posts in a row—on fratire, the Man Iron, and BRO-llinis—I thought it was time for something girly.

 

She-She Nail Spa, West Portal Ave., San Francisco

Pink awning, two feminine pronouns: definitely girly. So what’s the problem? Just this: I’m almost positive that what the owners were aiming for was chichi, the French word that’s pronounced “she-she.”

Chichi is both a noun (“frills” or “pretentiousness”) and an adjective (“precious,” “over-elaborate”), although you’re more likely to hear English speakers use it as a modifier meaning “fancy”: a chichi nightclub, a chichi boutique. The word has traditionally connoted artifice and affectation, although that may be changing: The online dictionary Wordnik gives “chic and stylish” as one definition. (Wordnik also gives a wonderful usage example from a 1994 Newsweek article: “But a fad New York jewelry line using old bottle caps may be the first to mix P.C. with chichi.”)

It wasn’t only “She-She” that fascinated me. I’m perfectly OK with sentences that end with prepositions—and you should be, too—but “Blow Away Prices Of” is just peculiar. Am I supposed to read it as “Blow Away Prices Of Waxing Packages” and mentally switch “of” to “on”? Well, I didn’t. Instead, I had unsettling thoughts about waxed packages.

Finally, what to say about “50% Off and Up”? Does that phrase indicate that I might sometimes expect a discount greater than 50%, or does it mean some “waxing packages” are half-price and for others the price goes up? Earlier this year, Language Log discussed a similar instance of “mathematically annoying advertising”—the phrase “up to X and more,” where X equals some number—but I searched in vain for guidance on “X% Off and Up.” At She-She, it appears, we’ve departed the realm of mere mathematical annoyance and ventured off and up into quantum confusion.

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Elsewhere in the world of beauty-shop names: Sophistry Skin Care, Polish on Piedmont, Aveida. And if title of this post mystifies you, read this.

Comments

[Vanessa]

I nearly spewed my cereal upon seeing this - in my home country, 'she-she' is a common euphemism for urinating. You hear it in two circumstances: when talking to kids, and when kids talk.

e.g. "I want to go she-she!" Kind of onomatopoeic, huh?

[Shawna]

"She-She" is obviously wrong, but when I see "chichi" I hear chee-chee (Hindi - dirty).