Hi! Welcome back to Adventures in Beautyland, a semiregular installment in the Hattie Hayes Blogomatic Universe. Last time, I talked about chopping off my hair. In today’s issue, I’m going to be talking about the other Crowning Glory of Ye Old Femininity, which is Long Pointy Finger Nails.
Now, I have to issue a disclaimer. I have long nails because I am my mother’s daughter. My mom has THE longest, strongest, fastest nails in the west. To my knowledge, she doesn’t do anything special to grow them out long; like Wolverine, she is a beautiful and stylish mutant. That said, even though I have the Official Jessie Hayes Patented Nail Genes, I too am susceptible to breakage, broken nails and chipped nail polish. So! I’m hoping that my tips here – my French tips, as it were – hahaha HAHAHA hahahaha – are helpful, whether you are my mom or not.
When I was in high school, I wasn’t allowed to paint my own nails. This was not a weird chastity/modesty thing, like the hyperfundamentalist Christian girls in my classes who weren’t allowed to wear sandals because it was “simulated nudity” (???). I wasn’t allowed to paint my own nails because I tended to…get…nail polish…everywhere! One time I got red nail polish ON MY FOREHEAD which looked soooooooooooo dramatic. Mind you, this is when I was 14 – 16 years old. To the best of everyone’s knowledge, my gross and fine motor skills were mostly developed, and yet I could not manage to get my nail polish onto my nails and nowhere else. After seeing me recklessly apply nail polish to my knuckles/temples/furniture, my mother instituted a mom-does-your-nails rule, a Mommicure, which was the right choice.
Which of course meant I began sneaking nail polish to school so I could practice painting my nails there, and if I did a bad job, I could find a way to clean myself up before getting home. And over time, this is how I got to be pretty good at painting my nails: the less evidence I left, the less I had to hide.
This photo above is my nails just after a manicure – done by a professional, not by me! But that’s 100% natural nail growth, baby. The manicurist asked if I wanted them cut short and I said…no?????? Fun fact: I tagged the nail salon in this photo when I posted it to Instagram, and, months later, they re-posted it on THEIR Instagram as a promotion for their acrylic nails. Haha! Joke is on you! Those grew out of my sweet tender flesh! The color above, in case you were curious, is Essie Tangoed in Love.
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