The first time I saw it I was taken aback. As I saw it again and again, I found it less and less remarkable, though a long way from mainstream. The phenomenon I am referring to is men painting their fingernails.
The first time was at the box office/concession stand of a movie theater. The guy who sold me a ticket and a box of organic popcorn had solid black fingernails. I normally don’t pay much attention to other people when engaging in routine transactions, but I took a closer look at this guy. He didn’t appear unusual in any other way. I live in a part of town that is popular with hipsters (that explains the organic popcorn), so I didn’t pay it any mind. I’ve seen stranger things, and I don’t mean the TV show.
Yet as I was out and about I saw it in other parts of town in all sorts of places…bars, restaurants, shopping malls, convenience stores. Black and red seemed to be duking it out for market dominance.
Recently, I came across the phenomenon again, but this time in a highly unlikely venue. While attending a minor league baseball game, the home team’s catcher (who shall remain nameless) was signing some autographs. I literally had a front-row seat for this, so I couldn’t help but notice that the catcher had green fingernails. I’m sure there was some formal name for the shade but I have no idea what it was. If you’ve ever tried to match old paint with the shades available at Sherwin-Williams, you know how many different names they have for the plethora of variations on the primary colors. To my untutored eyes, the catcher’s fingernails were somewhere between lime green and lima bean green.
It may be tempting to make some sort of homosexual joke about “pitching” and “catching,” but I don’t think that’s pertinent to this situation. A 200-pound buzzcut bruiser with green fingernails might not attract attention if he’s a bouncer at a hip nightspot, but this guy was not only a ballplayer, he was a catcher, a down-and-dirty position where wear and tear on the fingers is assured. The longer a catcher’s tenure behind the plate, the greater his chances of getting jammed, dislocated, or broken fingers. To say fingernail polish is impractical would be a gross understatement. Too bad Yogi Berra is no longer available for comment.
Now I have heard that relatively long fingernails are essential for knuckleball pitchers. But that is the only instance I know of when fingernails have any relation to the game of baseball. And I’m pretty sure that fingernail polish would have no bearing on the effectiveness of a knuckler. So I can only conclude that green fingernails on a ballplayer are strictly a grooming choice.
Of course, fingernail painting is regularly found among drag queens and trans women. Not so much for regular guys. A little research turns up the fact that nail-painting has been a goth thing for a long while. Since I don’t move in those circles, that was news to me. Another group that favors painted nails is what is called the emo crowd, or punk rockers. That genre, movement, or whatever you call it, has been around for decades but I have largely ignored it because I demand a bit more from music than volume and hostility. Aside from those two subcultures, however, I am not aware of fingernail polish being a thing among men. So how to account for it?
I believe it was Warren Farrell who once asserted that if women were attracted to men who could walk on their hands, men would immediately start learning how to do that. So there must be a significant number of women who approve of painted nails on men, or else it would not be happening. If women united on this issue and categorically decreed that men who apply fingernail polish are repulsive, it would quickly disappear. I’m sure there are individual women who feel this way, as women value men for their utility and painted fingernails do not convey that identity. But women will never voice their disapproval en masse. The reason is that breaking down gender stereotypes is a main theme of left-leaning women, meaning the majority of them. While they may not be thrilled about teenage sons who paint their nails, they will never forbid it. Indeed, they are more likely to see it as an opportunity to score some brownie points by boasting about the gender fluidity of their sons.
Of course, like any hard-to-explain phenomenon, male fingernail polish deserves a good conspiracy theory. Mine is this: It’s the cosmetic companies!
Perhaps one day a cosmetics CEO had an epiphany, realizing that his corporation was selling to just half the population. There was a vast untapped market of men out there. But how to get them to bite? And how to reel them in?
First, it was necessary to prepare the way by changing attitudes. They had to convince men – and women – that fingernail polish was not just for women. A man who used it wasn’t necessarily a sissy. Now I don’t have access to the executive suites at Avon or Mary Kay, so I have no evidence for this theory. It’s just my answer to the eternal question: Cui bono?
If there is such a thing as male privilege, it is surely the ability to lead a long, productive life without ever painting one’s fingernails. If you’ve ever witnessed a female in your family stripping her nails of old polish and then going through the tedious process of applying new polish, you might say to yourself, thank God I don’t have to do that. Life is greatly simplified when one can walk through a CVS or a Walgreens and totally ignore the aisles devoted to cosmetics.
Thanks to male privilege, fingernail grooming has traditionally been a simple matter of rooting out any dirt that gets under them. There is some wiggle room as far as length, but for men who work with their hands, short is a de facto job requirement. Long fingernails are simply incompatible with foundries, factories, and tools.
In my opinion, the ideal fingernail length, regardless of a man’s profession, is long enough to extract boogers without undue effort. The exact length for performing this duty efficiently will vary according to the circumference of the finger as well as the nostril. The thumb and index finger are the usual choices for this task, but there is always the occasional nonconformist who prefers the ring finger, the middle finger, or the pinkie. Adhering to the tenets of inclusivity, I do not marginalize such men.
I realize that some readers might think I am degrading this essay by reducing the issue of male fingernails to mere booger picking, as practical as that application is. But there is more to it than that: Namely, scrotum scratching. In both of these essential male activities, fingernail length is a matter of practicality; polish is totally irrelevant.
What is true of male fingernails is pretty much true of other aspects of grooming and adornment. In most societies the difference between male and female hair care is like the difference between hedge-trimming and topiary. In decadent societies, that distinction erodes. As I recall, hairstyling for men didn’t become a thing till the early 70s. Before that, haircuts were sufficient. I fail to see how styled hair enriched the lives of men. Perhaps it was another conspiracy, maybe a cabal of manufacturers of haircare products allied with underemployed hairdressers.
Then there is the subject of attire. If you watch awards shows, you can’t help but notice that the tuxedo is the male uniform of the day for such get-togethers. Female attire has much more latitude but it also attracts more scrutiny.
When John F. Kennedy was President, he famously dropped an off-the-cuff remark that everywhere he went, commentators always dealt at length with the First Lady’s attire and no one cared what he and Vice-President Johnson wore. That remained true right down to his last day in office. Even if you’re not a big JFK assassination buff, you know that Jackie was wearing a pink Chanel suit and matching pillbox hat on that fatal day. What was JFK wearing? No matter how many times you’ve watched the Zapruder film, you might be hard-pressed to note anything distinctive.
And so it remains today. After all these years, no matter what their politics, men still go with the suit, the power tie, and black shoes. The cut of the suit may vary according to body type and current styles, but the basics are remarkably stable.
I remember some years ago watching a documentary film about a prominent (i.e., wealthy) personal injury lawyer. One thing that stuck in my mind was his procedure of swapping out his gaudy wedding ring for a simple gold band before he went to trial. This wasn’t just a strategy to appeal to the jury – hey, look, I’m just a regular guy like you folks. He knew that the ring was a distraction. He didn’t want jurors being distracted by his ring while he was trying to get a point across to them. He had the income to purchase all sorts of bling, but he knew that his income depended on what people thought about what he said, not about his personal effects. In an ideal world, he could dress and adorn himself any way he wanted and it wouldn’t make any difference to the jury. But a real man must live in the real world.
It should come as no surprise that the teenage years are when the male agonizes the most about his appearance. The immature man says, “Look at me!” The mature man says, “Listen to me.”
I suspect that if you were to go in search of a male trial lawyer with painted fingernails, you would be on a fool’s errand…well, maybe not in San Francisco. If you are ever called in for jury duty, take a good look at how the attorneys are attired. Chances are it will be largely nondescript: suit, dress shirt, and tie, nothing out of the ordinary. They know that a bland wardrobe is a career requirement.
The exceptions are men whose appearance is interwoven with their public image. At one extreme, we have Michael Moore, a real-life counterpart of Peter Griffin of Family Guy. If you’ve ever seen a picture of Michael Moore’s Michigan mansion, you know darn well he has enough dough for a gym membership, a sojourn at a fat farm, or Lap-Band surgery, not to mention an occasional visit to the men’s department at an upscale department store. But being a fat slob is part of his brand. He would no longer be Michael Moore if he slimmed down and dressed better.
At the other extreme was the late author Tom Wolfe, who always appeared in public in a white suit. Of course, his dapper demeanor had no bearing on the quality of his prose any more than Colonel Sanders’s white suit did on the quality of his fried chicken. But it was an effective form of marketing. Who knows how many people saw Wolfe on TV talk shows and thought he was an interesting guy, then came across one of his books and bought a copy. In effect, he was saying “Look at me” as a way to get people’s attention so he could then say, “Listen to me,” that is, buy my book!
Of course, there are degrees of flamboyancy. The most over-the-top examples are drag queens whose services would not be in demand if they portrayed plain Janes, drab housewives, or mousy secretaries. I don’t pretend to understand the motivations that drive drag queens, but there seems to be some demand for their performances, so an income stream is involved. That cannot be said of the green-fingernailed catcher on my local minor league. I’m pretty sure nobody showed up at the ballpark to cheer or boo him based on his fingernails.
For females, there has always been a link between long nails and cat claws. The pussycat may look warm, fuzzy and inviting, but watch out! Also, the female fingernail thing is clearly a status trip. It’s a way for a woman to show that she doesn’t work with her hands, as the vast majority of women have done throughout history. Long painted fingernails announce to everyone present that she is not engaged in a menial occupation that would be likely to cause harm to those fingernails. Also, it’s much more attention-getting when women engage in finger-wagging.
The status trip also applies to the male, accounting for the dandy, the fop, the toff, the metrosexual, or whatever you call him. One look at his hands and everybody knows he doesn’t work at a forge or in the fields or in a factory. He may not be a genius but at least he doesn’t work with his hands. Lip service paid to working-class people notwithstanding, the proverbial indoor job with no heavy lifting is still the ideal. The working-class hero is the stuff of fiction. The exception to that is the professional athlete, who indeed gets his hands dirty but generally has no trouble attracting chicks and lucrative contracts.
I really can’t account for the catcher with the painted nails. Do his teammates give him grief about it? Don’t know. Does he have a hot girlfriend, perhaps a cosmetician, who digs the nails? Don’t know. Does he perform at drag brunches in the off-season? Don’t know. Geez, do you think he does his toenails too?
Only his teammates know for sure.
