Fifty Shades Of White Supremacy

Look at your hands, ladies. Stare at your girl’s fingers, gentlemen. Do you see color? Great. Do you see bare, seemingly innocuous, unpainted nails? Well then, I regret to inform you: that’s racist.

According to the ever-wise, prudent, almighty network that is the BBC, the bare-nails trend is really just a racist dog whistle promoting “white supremacist standards of beauty.” It’s a class issue, apparently. But not the way you think. It isn’t that you’re busy, broke, or a card-carrying minimalist. No, no, Susan. You’re targeting communities of color, you racist bigot.

I’m wallowing in self-loathing today as I gaze down at my acrylic-free fingertips. After this article, I am going to sprint to the nearest nail salon and demand they do their wors—uh, sorry, I mean their best!

It will cost me roughly $135 to get the culturally appropriate “works,” but hey, I stand in solidarity with my black, Latino, and Asian communities. I didn’t mean to be racist; I just *whispers* liked the look of a clean nail bed. Nobody told me that was a crime. I also happen to enjoy not collecting food, gunk, and garbage beneath my talons, but I’ll take extra precautions in the kitchen and the bathroom and order them extra long and extra bright, like 10 mini aircraft marshaling wands.

And who, pray tell, is the arbiter of this nail truth I’m heeding? None other than Paloma Buddemeier, the London salon owner who exposed this racist no-polish push. She seems lovely: a pregnant, Brazilian-born mother and entrepreneur who named her spa “Wumman.” 

Ahh. Wumman. See what she did there?

But Ms. Wumman claims the bare-nail look is synonymous with white supremacy and “quiet luxury.”

Right. You know what isn’t so quiet, Ms. Wumman? Posting social media videos from your gated community, toting a Chanel purse, with the Range Rover idling in the garage while a private car whisks you and the family to your new Notting Hill luxury spa.

Hey, nothing wrong with a girlboss showing off for the family. But there is something wrong with shaming your customers for spending $100 on a manicure that ends in clear polish. If they skip the five-inch claws, maybe it’s because they’re moms elbow-deep in dishwater, young girls learning their first guitar chords, or nurses forbidden to wear the Louvre on their fingertips at work.

Or maybe, they just want something simple, natural, and unmistakably their own in a world that’s increasingly materialistic, loud, and chaotic.

Plus, if nail art was born in Asia, South America, and Africa, wouldn’t you rather we naughty-nailgoers forgo the cultural appropriation altogether? I paint my own nails because I’m frugal and capable, thanks to a modicum of artistic talent and a $26 Amazon gel kit. Last week I went with white, which spawned its own panel of problems, since I’ve just learned that “white paint” is also racist.

I’m just going to wear gloves at this point. But then again, Michael Jackson wore a glove… and so did O.J. Simpson… so forget it. I’ll just amputate.

The BBC took the article down because it understandably sparked a swarm of backlash over its staggering stupidity.

In Ming China, crimson nails were reserved for the imperial household; in ancient Egypt, henna-stained fingertips marked rank. Color was the flex of elites. The masses kept their hands bare because they worked. If “tasteful” bareness is now white supremacy, then every farmer, nurse, guitarist, and dishwasher in human history was apparently running a racial conspiracy with their cuticles. 

Guys, sometimes a nail is just a nail. And the freedom to stroll into any salon and get whatever you want, without fear of being bombed, bullied, or left a hand short, is the quietest luxury of all.

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