But once I reached my thirties, a combination of maturity, practicality and the fatigue that comes with increased responsibility meant that the closest I came to turning a look was a few coats of polish on a special occasion. The rest of the time, it was a quick clip when they started to look ragged, stained with watercolour and pen, uneven and stress-bitten. But when the writers strike hit last summer, suddenly I had oodles of time stretching ahead of me, nowhere to be and no time to be there. The last time I’d felt that way was long before I started my career, when I’d spend high-school afternoons in the drug store testing colours on my thumb or a lazy Saturday in my earliest twenties requesting the technicians at Valley replicate everything from my dog’s face to oozing slime.
Even when I went to Japan, a mecca of nail art, it was to shoot an episode of Girls and I was too rushed to decorate every finger, simply getting one of my tattoos recreated on my thumbs (although I did come home with boxes and boxes of press-ons, including a set that depicted smiling cups of pudding dancing on thumb and forefinger). And so came my summer of nails, the longer the better, inspired by Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman, by early Lana Del Rey videos back when she called herself the “gangsta Nancy Sinatra”, by Lil’ Kim matching her nails to her pasties. I studied nail shapes (coffin? Who knew) and started a Pinterest, enjoying—in no particular order—’70s chevrons, a medieval harlequin pattern, ditzy florals, red glitter and black stilettos that looked like Morticia Addams was headed to a Berlin rave. It made every email I sent feel like an event and every book require a hand-selfie (helfie?).
No matter your level of daily dress-up, your gender expression or your age, there’s nothing quite like a nail to make every point you make feel, well, pointed. I loved every second of it. Yes, it required reading a surprisingly lengthy article about how to text with tips (pro move: use the sides of your thumbs, like you’re playing Nintendo), and I had to carry tweezers to remove my credit card from the ATM. (Pop-top seltzer cans? Out of the question.) But what I lost in efficiency, I more than made up for in the feeling of slinky glamour that my newly extended fingers gave me. (And as a girl with hands that resemble a bouquet of hot dogs, that’s always a boost, self-love be damned.) “You’re texting like you’re 98,” my husband noted (though even he had to admit it was worth it for the back scratches).
