“It’s harmful to conflate naked nails with taste or class, which are often just euphemisms for white supremacist beauty standards,” beauty writer and Allure contributor Kristina Rodulfo says in an Instagram Reel expressing her beef with this new resurgence of bare nails propaganda.
As far as bare nails fall into beauty hierarchies, they are, ostensibly, the baseline for indicating health, hygiene, and good grooming. Having clean, trim nails is often a uniform requirement for service and care workers, like nurses, cleaning staff, and food handlers (who are often people of color). Most people I know who keep their nails bare do so for work-related reasons. And conversely, most people I know who commit to regular manicure appointments and nail maintenance also cite work reasons: They want to appear polished and put together. If both are valid, are either of them valid? And why do people have such strong feelings about nails and their relationship to a person’s net worth?
Early in my career as a beauty writer in the 2010s, I contributed to a website that involved original photography, often of myself demonstrating beauty tutorials. It was made very clear from the commenters that chipped or worn nails were “distracting” and ruined a look (even if it was a makeup or hair tutorial that had nothing to do with my nails). If I didn’t have polish on, that also elicited accusations of laziness or dismay at my “incomplete” appearance. At the time, I remember thinking, “Who cares??” But as I watched beauty YouTubers and Instagrammers come to define the new digital beauty culture, I noticed they always had their nails done. The implicit expectation was that if you’re on screen, your nails must be camera-ready.
To be clear, the bare nails we’re seeing on influencers, red carpets, and runways still require making an effort. Even when so-called naked manicures are on the mood board for editorial and commercial shoots, there’s almost always a manicurist on set to file, shape, buff, and make the models’ hands look as flawless as possible. (As writer Bella Gerard pointed out in her “No one in Vogue gets their nails done anymore” Substack post, even an at-home non-manicure requires multiple products to get that “clean girl” look everyone’s raving about.) I asked my friend Stephanie Stone, an editorial nail artist, for her thoughts on this. “For as long as I’ve been doing this, 80 percent of the nail direction on set has always been clean, sheer, or buff,” she told me. “I feel like that’s more so the photos aren’t dated to an era, versus having a nail look that’s very identifiable within a trend timeline.” Practicality prevails once again.
A clear perk of bare nails being on trend now is that skipping manicures will save time and money. Manicures are expensive, especially if you’re doing gel, which most people I know are. In New York City, any kind of specialization or nail art is at least a three-dollar-sign price point before tip. So when bare nails were declared in again, my recession indicator alarm bells went off.
