red nails

an essay on femininity, growing up, and my evolved relationship with red nail polish

From my camera roll

Some children run through the house with fingers sticky from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or they run in from the sun-bathed yard with palms coated in slick mud. When I was a little girl, the mess covering my hands was blood-red nail polish. 

I was six years old when I painted my nails for the first time. My friend—a girl my age who lived a few houses down from mine—had a whole collection of nail polish. Bottles upon bottles of colors from bubblegum pink to seafoam green. Essie, O.P.I., and an array of other brands that probably haven’t been sold since the early 2010s. We painted our nails together in her bathroom, and when it was time for me to go home she gave me a bottle to keep. It was red, which was my absolute favorite color. 

I couldn’t wait to do my own nails. When the polish began to chip or smudge in the slightest, I’d apply another thick coat. My clumsy fingers lacked coordination, especially when it came time to paint with my non-dominant hand. I’d gloss the polish over my nails over and over again, try to fix my mistakes, and end up with fingertips dripping red. I’m not sure why I got so obsessed with it. Even when I knew I was making a mess, I’d keep going and apply another coat.

No one had ever painted my nails before. My mother thought manicures were a waste of time, and I don’t have any sisters. The only person I knew who wore nail polish was my grandma. Painting my nails made me feel special and unique because I thought it was an act reserved for mature women. 

Eventually, my parents took the bottle of polish away from me and hid it in one of our kitchen cabinets where I couldn’t reach it. It was only a matter of time before I got the polish all over our carpet or our coffee table, but that didn’t matter to me. I was devastated. 

I wanted nothing more than to be older than I was. I saw women in movies and magazines and wanted to be just like them. Later, I saw women on the internet and wanted to be just like them, too. I wanted their makeup, their hair, their bodies. Their nails. 

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I actually wanted to be older. More likely, I just wanted to look older. Older meant prettier to me, and I couldn’t wait to be pretty. I thought it was something magical that would happen to me as I grew up. I didn’t have boobs or hips. I didn’t have long, painted nails. I wanted these things because I thought they’d induct me into the ranks of the perfect women who had been shoved in my face ever since I could remember. 

After the red nail polish fiasco, my grandma painted my nails for me every time I visited her. In my mind, I was one step closer to being a woman. 

Years later, I started fourth grade. I looked nothing like my friends, and even less like the women I so desperately wanted to emulate. I was a very early bloomer. My friends still looked like little girls while I contended with my body changing in ways I didn’t understand. I was different, and I knew it.

I thought I must be a woman finally, even though I didn’t feel like one. Going from girl to woman wasn’t the seamless shift I’d believed it to be. I was stuck in a confusing in-between no one had warned me about. 

I didn’t engage with stereotypically feminine things for years, because I resented being a girl with my whole being. My classmates fawned over One Direction and Taylor Swift while I buried my nose in as many books as I could find. I started to use makeup to cover the new acne on my face, and it made me feel ashamed. Makeup wasn’t about self-expression or creativity, just shame and a deep desire to hide. 

I got acrylic nails for the first time in seventh grade. Acrylics were much cooler to me than regular polish because all the girls I idolized on Instagram and Tumblr had them. I always got red acrylics, no matter what. I’d experiment with different shades (maroon, cherry-red, etc.), but it was always some form of red. Maybe it was all the Lana Del Rey I was listening to at the time, or maybe it reminded me of the old bottle of polish in the kitchen cabinet—a relic from a time I’d never be able to return to. 

All those years ago, painting my nails was about experimentation. I’d coat my fingertips in scarlet polish and make a mess out of curiosity. It was my way of exploring femininity, similar to when I’d try on my grandma’s high heels and stumble down the hallway like a drunk model.

As I got older, it turned sour. The acrylics destroyed my natural nails, but at least they looked good. When they’d grow out, I’d pry the acrylics from my nail beds with my teeth. Girlhood was no longer something fun and pure. Somewhere along the way it’d turned painful, violent, disingenuous. 

I was taller than all of my friends. I weighed more than all my friends. I had curves where my friends were still flat. I wasn’t a girl anymore. I wasn’t a woman yet. I was something else entirely, something that reeked of loneliness.

I grew out of the acrylics phase within a couple of years. They were too expensive and impractical. After that, I’d paint my nails every so often but didn’t pay much attention to them. I didn’t bother making sure the paint didn’t chip or the nail was filed correctly. I didn’t care.

Now, my fingernails are long, shaped, and painted red more often than not. Somewhere in the past few years, I got back into painting them on a regular basis. For the first time, I do so with intention. I set aside an hour every couple of weeks and clip them, shape them, and paint them with multiple coats so they’ll be less likely to break or chip.

Sometimes it gets messy, but nowhere near how it used to be. Sometimes it hurts, like when the polish remover seeps into where I have the occasional hangnail, but nowhere near how it used to be.

From nyrovie-ii on Tumblr

It’s no longer a way for me to explore or a way for me to pretend. Instead, it’s become a method of self-care. It definitely doesn’t make me feel older anymore. I am older. Now, it just makes me feel like me. 

I used to spend so much time wondering what it meant to be a woman. Is it the way I look? The way I think? The way I act? I’ve learned it’s none of these, and also all of them. There’s no singular way to be a woman, and it’s not something you earn.

Wearing nail polish isn’t an inherently feminine act, or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s a form of expression. That doesn’t change the fact that it helped me discover what womanhood means to me. Gender doesn’t have to define someone, and oftentimes it shouldn’t. Sometimes, all I wanted was to rip myself away from the label of girl and woman. Now, I feel comfortable with them. I feel proud of them.

I keep my nails long and paint them red as a reminder of who I am. They’re my lucky tokens, my talismans. A lot can be told about a person by their hands. Are their palms calloused from hard work? Are their fingernails bitten down to the quick from anxious nights?

I’m not sure what exactly my red nails say about me, but I don’t think that’s for me to decide. For me, they remind me of being a little girl. They remind me to be authentic. 

At the very least, they remind me to set aside time for myself. Putting yourself first tends to be a radical act for any woman, so maybe that’s why I relish it.

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this is my first cohesive, structured essay i’ve written for substack so i hope you enjoyed it! if any of my words resonated with you, please consider sharing with a friend, leaving a comment, or subscribing to support my future work. thank you for reading.

until next time,

grace