Wait, painting fingernails is clothes now? Unpainted nails are considered naked?
According to the BBC, yes.
In recent months, Paloma Buddemeier has watched a stream of people walk into her nail salon with the goal of looking as if they’d never been there at all.
“It’s crazy,” the owner of Wumman Spa in London says.
These customers still get their nails filed, buffed, and trimmed. “You still do the cuticle, you do the soaking and hydrate everything,” says Buddemeier, “but you just put no polish on.”
To tell the truth I have no idea what that blather is. Why does anyone need someone else to file her or his fingernails? Do these people go to a spa to get their teeth brushed every night and morning? Are they able to put their own socks on? What the hell is “buffing” and why do people pay for it?
As for the polish – seriously? We’re supposed to find it odd that people don’t wear nail polish? It seems to me much odder that anyone does wear nail polish.
Driving this, she says, is a viral craze for bare-looking nails.
What do you mean a craze? That’s like saying there’s a viral craze for not pasting balloons to our heads. Here’s the thing: nail polish is not necessary.
Also, as so often, notice that not everyone wears it. Consider for instance men. Men don’t wear nail polish, with a few exceptions for men being eccentric or joking or camping it up. It’s news to me that many women wear it.
I know it used to be almost required, at least for the bourgeoisie. Women were all but required to wear nail polish and lipstick and stockings and high heels, and of course dresses or skirts. Katherine Hepburn was considered very eccentric for sometimes being seen in jeans. It was almost required, and then it wasn’t.
We should have stuck with it wasn’t. Decorating oneself now and then for fun or to celebrate or whatever, no big deal, but making it required again, so required that people express confusion and dismay when people fail to meet the requirement – that’s a terrible idea. Don’t.
Leave a Reply