I've been doing a lot of rumination on the topic of men deciding, in the last few years, to paint their fingernails, and on the reasons I initially revile slightly at the act. Aesthetic choices rarely bother me, and I have no problem with people dressing in drag or with the transitioning of wardrobes that a transgender person has to undergo. But straight men of a particular ilk have created a new trend within their niche, to paint their fingernails, which, as you know, is connoted with the female gender. But I'm trying desperately and futilely to figure out what message is communicated about gender and sexuality through the painting of a male's nails? And I need to determine whether my discomfort from seeing painted mail fingernails is an initial culture shock that I'll need to over come, or if I have any moral or just basis for my adverse feelings.
I'm staring to pin down the demographic of men who gravitate toward the choice to paint their nails. This may be overly generalistic, but the straight, cisgendered men who choose to paint their nails are typically substantially to the left politically, and lacking in nuanced opinion. At least, that's what I initially assume, since an aesthetic choice lacks the ability to communicate a detailed point or a reasonably researched stance regarding a complex issue. An aesthetic choice like the color of one's fingernails is even more restricted from nuance than the 140 characters you were allowed on old school Twitter. That's probably why I'm struggling to figure out the impetus for a man to paint one's nails: the simple act of adding color to your cuticles cannot possibly translate to a position detailed enough to mean anything. Cosmetics are frivolous; the fight, endeavoring to give women the rights and resources they need to be at the same level as men, is much more serious and involved. The men who paint their nails appear to want to show solidarity with this movement, but they may not necessarily understand much about it.
Before I get to anything else, I have to mention that my first reason for feeling discomfort about men's painted nails is that nail polish was always strange to me. Having no sisters in the house I grew up, I was bewildered to find that some girls had unnatural colors on their fingertips when I was in kindergarten. I had no idea why some girls in my kindergarten class had blue, purple, or pink spots on their hands. Maybe it was a skin condition? Were girls just born this way sometimes? I found it very strange as a five-year-old. I was getting to know what colors I could expect to see on people--varying shades of light and dark brown. But purple? Hot pink? Nail polish was bizarre to me as a child, and it still seems strange to me today. From a purely biological standpoint, I don't see how it attracts mates. Men interested in women are not looking at a girl's nail polish for sex appeal. Straight men, more than likely, aren't looking at your nail polish at all. I personally don't see how it could possibly enhance the beauty of a woman. Nail polish is one of those cosmetic attributes on which women compare notes only with each other-- it isn't something worn to affect the interests of men. This isn't to say that any choice made by woman should be made on the basis of whether it attracts men-- but the intent to attract mates certainly doesn't explain the existence of nail polish. My point is that nail polish is a thing that exists solely because of a cultural precedent-- a frivolous cosmetic cultural precedent that could just as easily not exist in another culture. And it isn't attractive to me personally, so maybe I just have a bias against the whole activity in general-- in which case, take the rest of this as a grain of salt. And this stance I communicate in this blog post has nothing to do with LGBT men or trans women who feel an innate interest in drag or female flavors of sexuality. I'm talking about cisgendered males here.
So what is the painting of men's fingernails supposed to symbolize? And what's the message conveyed by the men who do this? These are the real important questions, not my frivolous squabbling about appearances and how I think purple looks strange on a person's body. The intended message has to stem from the fact that in our culture, nail polish is a cosmetic intended only for females. It's definitively feminine to paint one's cuticles with that smelly colored liquid, and people want to challenge that notion. I'm usually one of the first to jump for joy at any attempt to subvert presuppositions of what people are "supposed" to do because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. I love breaking stereotypes. So why does this bother me?
For one thing, a revolution against gendering certain behaviors and actions should be fought most vigorously in favor of the gender most maligned by the status quo: women. Men painting their fingernails is an addition of a freedom afforded to men, not women. If men are approved by society to start doing a thing they didn't have approval for in the first place, men are scoring a point for their own gender-- not for women.
In addition, the message of revolution against heteronormativity is kind of reinforcing it, since your nail polish brought it up. I wouldn't have been reminded of how strictly feminine nail polish was until I saw it on your male hands. You may think that we can get to a society that's beyond gender roles, and that your male nail polish is proving that we're getting close to that; however, all your male nail polish did was shock me into remembering that nail polish is so strictly feminine. Your nail polish is basically a bumper sticker you wear on your hands to suggest that we can stop gendering aesthetic choices, but you need the intense gendering of nail polish in order to illustrate your point. Otherwise, the symbolism is lost on everyone. There's something about that that seems defeatist to me.
Probably the most concerning thing about men who paint their fingernails though, is the intensity and tackiness by which they try to symbolize solidarity with women (this isn't even mentioning the clumsiness and misguided nature by which they do it). If you're a woman alone in an elevator with another man, and he tells you out of nowhere that he's not a sex offender, how do you feel? If a man talks at you for dozens of minutes about how not-sexist he is, do you believe him? And after how many minutes of this blathering do you decide to stop believing him? To me, men who choose to sport nail polish seem like they are on step 2 of many, of trying to counter their inner sexism. (Step 1 is admitting you have a problem.) When you're new to addressing your own inner prejudices, you may struggle with communicating your new stances that are more ethical and equitable than those from your sexist past. Painting your nails as a male can look like an attempt to pander to women or LGBT folks, and pandering can come off as insulting or disingenuous to some people. It's a cumbersome gesture that indicates a person who's either new to love and tolerance, or failing to understand that a complex issue can't be boiled down to a cosmetic choice. It kind of looks like a symbol of solidarity with women and/or potentially the LGBT community, but nobody is really sure which, and nobody is really sure which of their movements is advocated. But in any case, signaling some kind of disdain toward gender norms isn't enough to convince anyone you aren't still sexist--especially when nobody else was discussing that elephant until you brought it into the room with your fingertips. Just as I cringe when someone says that they aren't racist since they have a white friend, I also am bound to cringe when someone says they're not sexist because they did a feminine thing to their hands. The act of a man painting his nails doesn't seem like a sign that he wants to make meaningful progress on the battlefields of women's rights or LGBT rights; instead, it seems like a man's protest against people who call him sexist, and when man doth protest too much, I get skeptical and uncomfortable.
