On Nails

As seen in the GDP newsletter.

—

Last month we discussed the dissonance of maturing. The month before, our human tendency to celebrate innovation without taking responsibility for what it replaces.

This month I want to talk about something even deeper and more complex.

My nails.

I’ve never been much of a “nails girly,” as the TikTokkers say. I’ve always appreciated them on others, but the process is too time consuming and expensive for me. Plus, my inner repressed Midwesterner will do just about anything to avoid touching hands with a stranger for 60 minutes.

Sure, part of me has always felt a little bad every time I looked at my hands. A nagging feeling that I should be doing more for my nails. Maybe not every woman relates to this, but I know for a fact that many do. It was a feeling I had learned to live with.

A week before my wedding, I took a deep breath and made an appointment at a fancy nail salon on Sacramento Street. If there was ever a time to get my nails done, this was it.

The appointment began and I can only describe my behavior as that of a newborn foal struggling to stand upright for the first time: gawky and slimy with no idea what I was doing.

The chic salon owner, a recent Wharton grad in low-rise jeans, rolled her eyes. “Give her two coats of ____ and one coat of ____.” I put in blanks here because, to me, the color names were so much WAH WAH, like an adult talking to Charlie Brown.

I wasn’t surprised that my nails came out looking nice for the wedding. What did surprise me was how much I loved them—with an intensity I usually reserve for my parents’ dog, Angus.

I told myself I would get them taken off after our honeymoon. A symbolic return from wedding madness to real life. Except I didn’t. And, as I think about it while writing this, I won’t. Because now that I’ve had a taste of fancy nails, in the words of Gollum, we wants it, we needs it. 

Long nails feel like high heels for your fingers. They uplevel your sweatpants and make you feel as if you might actually become the put-together person you’ve been aspiring to be ever since you bought your first color-coded binders in middle school.

So, why do these silly nails—the ones that have caused me to make a million typos as I write this—make me feel so good about myself? Is it the nails themselves, or the societal expectations around them?

The history of the manicure could fill several books. Egyptian mummies from 5000 BC were found with gilded nails, and a solid gold manicure set was unearthed in Babylonia in 3200 BC. But it’s the Chinese who are credited with creating the first nail polish in 3000 BC, when women soaked their nails in a combination of egg whites, gelatin, beeswax, and dyes from flower petals.

For centuries, long, colorful talons have been an indication of wealth and social status—along with an assumption that you could not possibly work and have such nails at the same time. Based on my limited experience, they were corrr53c#ect.

The first glossy nail polish introduced in the 1920s was literally car paint. Then, mercifully, Revlon changed the game in 1932, launching what we now know as modern nail polish.

Today, manicured nails can communicate identity, creativity, belonging, and resistance. Black women use their manicures to push back against Eurocentric expectations and aesthetics. In LGBTQ+ communities, nails are a way to experiment with gender expression. Alternative subcultures use them to signal rebellion and a rejection of mainstream beauty ideals. Sometimes a manicure says, “I want to fit in.” Sometimes it says, “I want to stand out.” And sometimes it says both things at once.

Human behavior rarely exists in isolation from culture. Loving manicures doesn’t necessarily mean that a person has been manipulated by beauty standards, just as participating in beauty culture doesn’t automatically erase personal agency.

So maybe my question shouldn’t be, “Why do I love having my nails done?” Maybe it’s really, “Why do I feel the need to justify the things that bring me joy at all?”