Bear with me, because we’re going to start out talking about someone we’ve come to associate with a certain type of nail, and that person is Khloe Kardashian.
She recently appeared on the cover of L’Officiel Italia, a “fashion, luxury and lifestyle” magazine (aren’t they all, I hear you ask), styled by none other than her sister Kim.
Can I just say: I truly, sincerely, deeply wish that celebrities would stay in their lanes. Isn’t it enough for Kim to be a… oh my God, I Googled her net worth and she is a billionaire according to Forbes, therefore definitely does not need to be styling magazine shoots.
You know who does need to be styling magazine shoots?! Stylists! Imagine what a massive deal it would be for a stylist to get to work on a cover shoot for Khloe Kardashian, and here comes Kim, swanning in, insisting on doing it herself, and, dare I say, not even particularly well…
I mean… lol. I know it’s not really the done thing to lol at fashion shoots, but lol I did, when I saw this photograph of Khloe – famously 5ft 10in tall and not really in need of enormous platform boots – awkwardly running her gloved hand down her bleached hair.
Anyway, the point is not the fashion, but I could go on about that for a while if asked. (Please, ask me.)
The point – or the news story, at least – taken from this photoshoot is the fact that Kim, renowned minimalist, insisted that Khloe get rid of her trademark talons for this cover shoot. (The idea that Khloe’s nails were used as a way of accusing her of being a bad mum, though – what?! How about you track down some dads who play golf to accuse of neglecting their offspring.)
Short, sleek nails are in! They’re having a moment! I know this because I’ve just started watching Vanderpump Rules, and in season one – let’s ignore the fact that this aired a decade ago – waitress Stassi Schroeder is seen, in several scenes, painting her very short nails a beautiful cherry red. She inspired me, in fact, to seek out Essie’s Geranium nail polish and paint it on my own nails (chipped within hours, about which the less said, the better).
The latest news in nails – imagine how much Kim and Khloe would appreciate my alliteration, if only they were smart enough to read my newsletter – is decidedly more neutral than Stassi’s bright red digits, mind you; minimalist nails (the French ombré manicure, for example, a personal anti-fave) have been big for a while, with the milk bath manicure (I shit you not) being, according to Refinery29 at least, the latest must-have mani.
Because I am basic, I’ve spent the best part of the past decade both foolishly ignoring Vanderpump Rules – I’m making up for it now, let me tell you – and feverishly pinning bright, punchy polish colours and designs to my basic bitch Pinterest board, inventively called “beauty”.
I, with my leopard print nail art and Fisher-Price style colourway preferences, am very not on trend, but as I sit here typing this, wearing a pair of neon orange cycling shorts I bought in the Old Navy sale, I suppose I can’t be surprised.
A friend of mine recently met with a colleague to discuss her prospects of promotion in her corporate job, and her colleague – well-meaningly, she says, although I suspect there was some shade in there – told her that she’d need to start looking the part of a higher-up, before she even was one (or could afford to look like one).
“I mean, I can tell you don’t spend a lot of money on yourself,” she said – my friend is separated and has two children – and then added, “I mean, look at your nails.”
She showed me the offending nails the following day; painted an orange-red not unlike my new Essie nail polish, two of them were chipped. “I need to start wearing my gardening gloves,” she lamented. “Or going for manicures.”
What struck me most of all about this was the idea that spending money – on oneself, but in this very specific way – was in some way a sign of professionalism, when the profligate spending of money (ahem) is often seen as the very opposite.
I also started to think about my own bare nails, which I have painted precisely once in the space of a year. Have they been messaging to people, all this time, that I am unprofessional? Do people see me, shopping in Target in the middle of the day, wearing puffy denim shorts and my new Van Halen T-shirt, and think, there’s no way she could be in the highest echelons of business? (And, if they did, why do I care?)
It feels, to me, a bit like it’s wrapped up in the same sort of judgment society reserves for fat people, when they are judged to have “let themselves go” or thought not to care about their “health” (when “health”, much like “professionalism”, is not actually related to body size or nail condition) – taking the time, effort and, yes, money, to get one’s nails done is indicative of something positive that I can’t quite put my finger on (if you’ll excuse the pun).
(That reminds me of another friend of mine, who joined Weightwatchers and got in the habit of repainting her nails every single day, right after dinner, so that she wouldn’t be tempted to dip her fingers – she did three layers, so it took about seven hours to dry – into a chip packet, or a bag of Maltesers.)
This is also all front of my mind because I keep getting targeted ads for nail health, complete with disgusting photographs of fungal infections of the nail bed. Buy this product, and your nails will be better! these ads say, and I’ll admit I’ve been tempted, despite having no outward signs of fungal issues.
What the ads don’t – but do, really – say, is that if I buy this product my life will be better. I will appear more professional. I will look like someone who spends money on herself and is therefore ripe for promoting, respecting, revering. Fine, revering might be a bit much, but you get the drift.
It’s like when strong became the new skinny, and we had to start stressing about the fact that, not only were we not skinny, we were now not strong, to boot! Nails are just the latest in a litany of things we have to strive for, work at and worry about.
They’re a distraction! A red herring! While the books are being burned, we’re too busy worrying about fungal infections to notice! This is just what happened in The Handmaid’s Tale! (Again, not quite.)
Anyway, another terrible thing that happened this week is that one of my social media feeds, I can’t remember which one, showed me this horrific news story, from 2021. Click through at your peril.