Online the “naked” look is credited as part of wider trends, including the “clean girl aesthetic” that has become synonymous with slicked-back hair and dewy skin. Dominated by wealthy, white women, it has been criticised for co-opting black and brown beauty habits. Ranking “naked” nails as more desirable than statement styles, especially when nails and nail art are so rooted in race, further taps into this, with some critics considering it a form of erasure.
Irene Shelley, the editor of Black Beauty and Hair magazine, says the “trend itself isn’t the problem: minimalism is a valid choice for anyone”. However, she says a problem arises when “a bare aesthetic gets coded as more sophisticated or more professional than a fuller, more expressive one that’s historically been coded as Black or working-class. Nails should be allowed to be a form of self-expression without a hierarchy attached to them.”
Ateh Jewel, a beauty journalist and broadcaster, compares it to Coco Chanel making tanned skin desirable among the white upper class in the 1920s. “Beauty is just another way to see how culture reflects power, status and racial prejudices,” she says. For Jewel, who has “always loved a ‘naked’ nail as well as “colourful fun nail art”, her own personal preference is now colour. “I only wore black and had naked nails before the BLM movement. Now I’m leaning into nail art and wearing pink as I don’t adhere to old social structures any more.”
For those who are tempted to fake the “naked” look, Goddard says the most important factor is to choose “a reputable salon where they’re applied and removed correctly.” She also suggests avoiding at-home gel kits as “improper removal can cause damage”. As for ditching the polish to let nails “breathe”, Goddard says that is a myth. “You don’t need to take breaks,” she says. “Nails are made of dead cells. As long as your nails are healthy and your manicures are applied and removed properly, there’s no reason you have to go without polish unless you want to.”
Completely off topic, but Velma…you made me spend money today 🫣
I’ve had that green polish from the Trapped collection saved ever since you first showed it to me. I just bought the entire collection because they are all so pretty!! 🤣
Picking up fabulous, shiny, new nail polish is quite on topic imo! How fun!! Enjoy all the pretty new colors :D
This article highlights why having any beauty standard is an impossible balancing act. At one point it says the “clean girl aesthetic” co-opts black and brown beauty standards, while shortly after saying that codifying the clean look as sophisticated is also somehow prejudiced against those same people. People who apparently prefer more colourful expression, one paragraph later.
While this article goes all over the place, I have to remind myself that fashion isn’t one uniform structure, which makes it difficult to comment on. The article contradicts itself because black and brown people don’t have unifying beauty standards.
While this article goes all over the place, I have to remind myself that fashion isn’t one uniform structure, which makes it difficult to comment on. The article contradicts itself because black and brown people don’t have unifying beauty standards.
I think that’s exactly why the article goes all over the place. Oftentimes, the media wants to treat women as a monolith - a group of consumers that are ready to be sold the “next big thing” when it comes to fashion trends and be manipulated through advertising and social pressure to conform or be seen as more serious. It’s been used both as a way to boost sales and as a way to cast types of women as undesirable. It’s hard to pinpoint why there’s a natural push for clean girl aesthetic or maybe the clean girl aesthetic is being pushed for a reason from outside forces.
Beauty trends during recessions are often highlighted as proof of ways society at large changes under economic hardship and how we expect women to look and act during such times.
It’s an interesting topic. The article leaves a bit to be desired.
A lot of Buzzfeed-type articles, of which this article may or may not be a part of, exist to drum up engagement since the business model is to pump out new articles on a daily basis to maximize exposure to ads. So it can be hard to be sure whether a proposed problem is a genuine one felt by a significant part of a marginalized community. Like, there were a handful of queer- and trans-focused think pieces in 2016 HuffPost that would sometimes make me raise an eyebrow, just to provide a personal example. And in many cases the author doesn’t bother to provide hard data or evidence of harm being done beyond one or two interviewees, which was the case here.
The downside of some well-meaning online activism is it can lead to some extremely perfunctory actions like changing one’s profile pics for one week to “support BLM” before resuming their lives as normal, or even radicalize people farther right after mistakenly thinking some odd think piece is what we all uniformly think.
I want to be supportive and open to criticism, and there’s a lot I don’t know, but I’m also skeptical of capitalistic news agencies that can sometimes cause more division than unity. But if someone in my personal life felt I was doing cultural appropriation with my personal aesthetic, I’d want to know so I can stop doing that.
It is interesting, on first read I was like “Why the fuck would I care about nails?” On second read I asked myself why this should matter, and realized it’s just the reflection on the surface of a deeper lake.
I might be biased because nail painting is a long-held hobby of mine so the topic is particularly interesting when I find people outside of the hobby talking about it. It reminds me of reading about how women painted lines on the back of their legs to make it look like they were wearing nylons during the second world war even though they had to go without for the war efforts.
Oh no it really is a signal for the economic trajectory of the world, something important to notice. I wish the article dove a little deeper into that.
And I didn’t know about the line thing. It’s neat how that line became a fashion in itself even now that we have seamless nylons.
People are getting manicures to look like they don’t have manicures? I guess makeup to look like no makeup has been a thing for a long time.
I can’t really speak to this as I’m very much not a part of the fashion world and I really don’t understand it. But it reads like yet another form of policing women’s bodies.
Are there any choices women can make for their bodies (or anything else) that will not be politicized and judged in a double bind?
Be gorgeous! But don’t let it look like you put effort in. But don’t look like you didn’t put effort in. And certainly don’t cheap out with at home products. Most of your disposable income should go to making yourself pleasant to look at. Also, you’re racist for your nail choices. And if you’re not being racist, you’re culturally appropriating. Shame on you.
I used to read the Guardian a lot, but over time this sort of navel gazing holier than thou article that they often do became too irritating for me*
I don’t think this helps anyone, and the way it only talks about white and black nail trends, and about those as monoliths, and both just in English speaking countries, makes it easy to dismiss IMO
* the other sort is casually assuming that all their readers have shitloads of disposable income. Like listing ‘budget winter jackets’ with the cheapest one being $500 or something
🤦♀️ The Bourgeois Left strikes again, I see.
Finally, my personal laziness has become fashionable.
Lol me too
Regarding breaks, if you’ve kept your nails covered for a long time, like years, and then decide to go naked, make sure you use adequate moisture for your nails, they will be dry at first. Use cuticle oil every day. I had nails for decades but took them off a few years back to deal with the greenies, haven’t had the time to sit down and do them again since. This has inspired me, maybe I’ll do them tomorrow. As for the racial aspect, it always goes down like that, it’s like with straight hair being somehow superior to curly or kinky. Racists gonna racist, they’ll always find a way.
This is bordering on politics, so mods please let me know if this isn’t the right space to post. I thought it would be fitting.
c/feminism on either Beehaw or lemmy.world would be good options if this post happens to get taken down.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this article or how much consensus there is on this issue among Black folks as I don’t have that lived experience.
I live under a rock and am bad at keeping up with fashion trends and emerging fashion-related social issues in general. Usually I leave my nails bare and give them a nice shape, and sometimes I paint them black, and I seldom pay for my manicures because it’s pricey. That’s pretty much what I’ve always done.
Saving this post to continue reading other perspectives on the issue. Always happy to listen and change how I do things to avoid hurting others or inadvertently practice a Black-exclusionary form of feminism.
My own feelings on the entire matter is that I’m staunchly opposed to women being told what to or not to wear. Clean and/or bare nails aren’t any more or less professional than nail colors and the framing of it that way is odd to me. Makes me think it’s way more about pushing women to act a certain way to be seen positively by society and ew I always hate that haha.
The article glosses over the DIY nail painting communities a lot as well. There’s a large amount of options between going to the salon and having bare nails.
