Nails speaking volumes

An average lady in Nigeria has some sort of decoration or addition to her nails, be it mild or loud. For ladies, beyond the claimed beauty nails give to appearance, nails speak volumes.

An article by thecut.com, an online publication that covers restaurants, nightlife, shopping, fashion, politics, and culture, it explains what getting your nails done really means.

According to the article, beautifully groomed hands and painted nails are associated with powerful women, not those who work for a low hourly wage. “Over the (relatively short) course of my career, I’ve found that my level of agency at work and grooming habits have moved in harmony,” wrote Haley Mlotek in an ode to gel manicures earlier this year.

In 2012, The Wall Street Journal documented the dubious trend of professional women having meetings at the nail salon. And some years ago, the consulting giant McKinsey used free manicures to recruit female MBA students at Stanford, with some observers commenting that getting manicures had become the female equivalent of playing 12 holes of golf at an exclusive country club.

Unlike other services that help some women find professional freedom, such as paying another (probably poorer) woman to care for her kids or clean her home, manicures are a way of outsourcing labour that women previously did for themselves in a way that seems relaxing and fun.

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There are no ‘nail wars’ in which women are potentially judged for their decision to paint at home or go to salon. Paying for a manicure was not, until recently, a political choice.

Nail care isn’t just grooming anymore; it’s self-expression,” writes Nails magazine publisher Cyndy Drummey.

It’s also an easy way to find a superficial connection with women you don’t know well, or to cement a familial bond. “I got into it because my mom and I do it together — that’s pretty much how we bond — and it’s a practice I’ve carried on with my girlfriends,” says Samhita. “I also think nail salons are a safe space for women to be on their own.”

“I noticed that women mostly go alone to get their nails done,” says Holly Evan, whose Vietnamese father owned a nail salon in Washington, D.C., when she was growing up.

“I remember one time my father was trying to get manicures done quickly, and this woman explicitly said, ‘Um, I came here to relax. Could you please slow down?’” Evan added that because she speaks Vietnamese — like more than half of nail technicians do — she’s never felt completely relaxed in salons. The less distance you have from the women doing your nails, the less luxurious and relaxing the experience seems to be.

The $10 (N7,000) manicure is the equivalent of supermarket sushi or high-fashion knockoff: It only feels luxurious until you consider what you’ve really purchased.

“Many of my colleagues have already tied themselves up in ethical knots over whether to stop getting cheap manicures,” writes Dara Lind at Vox, in a guide that offers precious few tips for finding an ethical manicure.

Some women have vowed to tip more generously; although, as Slate pointed out, that doesn’t seem likely to be effective.

In Nigeria, at minimum, you can look for salons that meet healthy Nail Salon standards. Ladies are raking in good sum of money from the nail business. Ladies do not mind spending as much as one to two hours getting their nails done.

Maybe the bigger answer, though, is to realize that part of what’s truly luxurious about getting your nails done is the time it allows you to spend by yourself or with your friends without distraction. Surely that’s replicable without gel polish and calf massages.