Get your nails done or dont..
I’ve recently noticed some conversations online willing people to ‘rebel’ against getting their nails done. Obviously as a nail bar owner I have a vested interest in the points being made! However, I did want to listen with an open mind, without my business owner hat on and interrogate the why and where this push against having your nails done was coming from. To do that, I had to track the journey of where painting your nails came from and why we do it to this day.
In Nails: The History of the Modern Manicure, Suzanne E Shapiro traces the origins of the modern manicure all the way back to Babylonian warriors and Egyptian royalty who used nail colour to signify status over 5,000 years ago. The first commercial nail polish emerged in 1914 and painting your nails was a push back against the androgynous trend of the time. Choosing to paint your nails has always been a way of expressing yourself and tied in to fashion and beauty trends as they evolve as well as changing ideals of femininity.
Whilst having your nails done has recently been a female activity, in Tropical Popical we have certainly noticed the rise of male and non-binary people partaking in the ritual of nail painting. However, nail enhancements continue to be enjoyed by a majority of women. And as with any female dominated activity, it often feels like we have to justify why we like or dislike what society deems feminine.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addresses this when she writes: “Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to suggest that they are. Sadly, women have learned to be ashamed and apologetic about pursuits that are seen as traditionally female, such as fashion and makeup. But our society does not expect men to feel ashamed of pursuits considered generally male – sports cars, certain professional sports. In the same way, men’s grooming is never suspect in the way women’s grooming is – a well-dressed man does not worry that, because he is dressed well, certain assumptions might be made about his intelligence, his ability or his seriousness.”
However, we do have to acknowledge there is a grooming gap between the rituals men and women are expected to undertake to show up ‘professionally’. Margaret E Ward writes in the Irish Times that “The grooming gap is the set of social norms and expectations around appearance that is imposed largely on women workers. Tidy hair, make-up, nails and clothing are necessary in the modern workplace but this expectation has hidden costs, both financial and time-wise for women.”
Perhaps instead of directing women to stay away from things they enjoy we should be deconstructing the unfair performance expectations that are placed on women in the workplace.
I’ve been undertaking my own very unscientific research amongst our clients as to why they get their nails done. Answers range from they enjoy the dopamine hit they get when they look down at the colour/design on their hands; they enjoy their trip to the nail bar for the chats and connection that can’t be achieved with WFH/scrolling; their appointments can be built out into making their trip to town an occasion slash ritual and they build their pint/wine/shopping around their appointment to the very basic fact they just like getting their nails done.
In Shapiro’s introduction in her book she writes “Nails tend to be admired most by the person to whom they’re attached. Most of my research affirmed more recent trends in feminist scholarship, recognizing the importance of our beauty rituals. They’re a big part of our identity, as individuals and members of a group. After learning about so many bold female entrepreneurs in nail care and eminent personalities who just really loved nails, it became even more evident that our affection for manicures is hardly dependent on manipulation from men.”
In BKMAG, Rebecca Jennings observes “With each anecdote, Shapiro’s thesis becomes more apparent: that women’s nails, like our bodies, have always been used as a template on which to inscribe culture, but only recently have they been embraced as a tool for individual expression.”
We have used our nails as a decorative tools for centuries - it has become an extension of how we dress and adorn ourselves with jewellry and make up. To really interrogate how much of what we do is because of society's standards of beauty and as opposed to the rituals we actually enjoy requires very deep research as the ever changing trends of our body shapes and decoration are impacted by celebrity; media and actually - politics. The clean girl aesthetic didn’t just arrive.
Currently, conservative fashion and beauty ideals are having a moment. Driven by trad wife ideals being orchestrated by The Heritage Foundation via Trump and MAGA and even through the MAHA movement. The MAHA movement has been especially able to flourish after covid propagated the rise of the pastel QAnon conspiracy that laid the groundwork especially with privileged, white women. The MAHA movement is built on wellness bros who believe they can optimise their health through biohacking without the use of modern medicine and oftentimes momfluencers who push a stripped back, what they perceive as natural health often achieved with high cost treatments; supplements and general wellness choices of food, exercise etc that can only be accessed by the wealthy, privileged class whilst undermining the scientifically backed systems and healthcare of the general population. Violet Nguyen writes in her article ‘Performative Femininity: the Dirt Behind the “Clean Girl Aesthetic”’: “The Clean Girl aesthetic is ultimately about control of one’s body, environment, and emotions, which requires access to high-end cosmetic products, organic food, and a “slow-living” lifestyle afforded only through class privilege.”
Kaz Ross is a Lecturer at the University of Tasmania’s School of Humanities has said that pastel QAnon was mostly adopted by those interested in “essential oils, crystals, tarot card reading and fortune-telling as in the wellness industry they've already got a big suspicion of authority, you know, pharmaceutical companies, mainstream thinking around diet and exercise.” Dr Ross continues that the uptake of these theories by influencers is motivated by “the business model of generating clicks”.
It is also telling that it is the MAGA/MAHA/privileged white women pushing back against decorative beauty rituals when these very art forms have been driven by black culture ever since long, pointed nails were a symbol of status and elegance in ancient Egypt and the Congo, where beauty and power went hand in hand. Cut to more recent times and maximalist nails and enhancements were driven by an energetic black culture and brought to the mainstream by people like Sharmadean Reid of WAH Nails.
We opened Tropical Popical around the same time WAH Nails was at its peak popularity, but it also happened to be in a recession. At the time, we were able to bring a more affordable model of nail treatment to the table. This worked in much the same way as the lipstick effect - during times of financial instability or crisis, when people don’t have the means to indulge in designer clothes or more expensive beauty treatments and products, getting your nails done can be an affordable gateway to indulge the lil treat mentality without breaking the bank.
We also opened Tropical Popical to be a beauty leveller and weirdly to try and escape beauty ideals. It didn’t matter what size you were, whether you fit into a traditionally beautiful mould or whether you could afford expensive beauty interventions - nails were the great leveller that could make everyone feel great.
At the end of the day, get your nails done or don’t - nobody really cares. But going on a personal tirade against something other people enjoy, that you find to be a waste of time is actually just a waste of time.