Fingernail Polish Revisited or Ten Ways to Express Yourself

You can tell a tree’s age by cutting it down and counting its rings.  Counting the rings on a woman won’t tell you as much, but taking a look at old photographs and checking out the length of her nails will.  If they exceed half an inch, then most likely she owns nail polish whose color has gone in and out and in and out of style.

 

In the seventies, I wore my nails short, not because of any sense of fashion, but because I gnawed them off.  To compensate for my blunt fingertips, I brushed on the oh-so-popular white metallic polish.  The popular girls still snubbed me because they flaunted white metallic lipstick as well, and I wasn’t allowed to wear any. 

 

In the eighties, my nails started to grow, but these were the greed-is-good years and I had something to prove in the male-oriented professions to which I gravitated.  No polish.  Modest length nails.

 

In the nineties, my nails grew to match my expanding shoulder pads.  A professional woman without long, colorful nails was like a peacock without feathers.  As mine wouldn’t grow long enough, I visited the manicurist weekly so she could cement acrylic ones into place.  I was constantly popping them off and finding them in the soup pot, under the couch, or on the driveway.

 

In the oh-oh’s, I returned to nature.  The acrylics were a thing of the past.  My nails were a good length to teach in a classroom with authority, the polish pale, so as to keep the student’s attention on what I was pointing at on the chalkboard and not the pointer.

 

Now we’re in the new decade and I just cut my nails, filed them to a sexy half-moon shape and stroked on a deep purple color.  I’m glad I’ve found a way to express myself that doesn’t require anything to be pierced or tattooed.  And that I feel free from caring what others think about what I do to my body.

 

My fingers, like lacquered hand puppets, say, “I’m old enough to know what I want and young enough to go for it.”

 

I’m like a tree in fall, with Passion-in-Paris-Purple leaves.

 

 

Posted by Bliss at 3/13/2010 12:16 PM
Categories: Becoming Bliss
Tags: mature women nail polish women
 
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