My babysitter Noreen wore long acrylics in frosted pink that, to my five-year-old self, were the epitome of glam. I loved to watch her hands as she fried a grilled cheese, finger-combed watermelon-scented mousse through her bangs, or twisted the phone cord as she chatted to her boyfriend, Gene. Even when one broke and she had to hold it in place with a Band-Aid, I swooned at the impossibly adult je ne sais quoi of being a woman with nails to boot, imitating her by sticking strawberries on the ends of my fingers or forming my own with red Silly Putty.
Meanwhile, my mother and her friends were clean girls before there was a name for the aesthetic. As artists in the male-dominated ’80s, they were wearing loose-fitting suiting by Comme des Garçons and cutting their nails to the quick, partially for practicality (they were wielding paintbrushes and cameras, sculpting and performing) and also to prove that their femininity didn’t prevent them from playing in the big leagues—a stigma that culturally we’ve at least pretended to abandon. But, as always, it takes work to look effortless—my mother had her nails buffed and painted with a clear lacquer every other week, a process I watched like a hawk, often grabbing pinks and purples and begging her to give them a try. The closest she came was classic red for special occasions. Meanwhile, I collected Wet n Wild polishes and lined them up on my windowsill like I was the proud owner of a rainbow itself.
In high school in Brooklyn, long nails festooned with sunsets or airbrushed with the heavy tracks of monster trucks, screaming CAUTION against yellow paint, became an accessory as coveted as nameplate earrings and Timberland boots. (Like so many good things, nail art was co-opted from the hip-hop looks of people like Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown that began influencing us all in the early aughts and still do today. Throw in the kawaii nail art of Japan, and rough it up with runway-ready piercings and gems, and you had decades of trends.) My mother found acrylics “too mature” and made a highly specific rule that I could wear any nail color I wanted as long as it didn’t read as adult—baby blues, electric greens but absolutely no red, no coral, not even a pink. Through my 20s I continued to associate bright nails with personal expression, and was an early adopter of nail art salons like New York’s Valley Nails and Vanity Projects, where I’d watch with jealousy as the burlesque dancer in the seat beside me applied inch-long tips studded with faux rubies.
But once I reached my 30s, 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 watercolor and pen, uneven, and stress-bitten.
But when the writers strike hit this past 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 colors on my thumb or a lazy Saturday in my earliest 20s 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 re-created 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.
