A man polishing his nails in 2024: Why doing so only arouses suspicions

— So, the nails didn’t matter to you?

— No, the opposite. In fact, the first thing I noticed was your painted nails.

— Really? And you didn’t think I might be gay?

— No, love. I find it funny that you think like that. How naïve. It hasn’t been that simple for a long time, I mean, I don’t think people make that direct association.

From a work perspective, the night has been a failure. No one cares that my nails are polished, at best they’ve been more charming than usual, or at least that’s the feeling I got. The magazine assignment that I paint my nails coincides with my stay in Malaga, Spain, during the film festival. I bought the nail polish at Primor in a shopping mall. I chose an electric blue, ignoring my friend Marina, who preferred black or dark blue.

— I don’t want to look like an aliade [pseudo-ally].

— Relax, Dani, I don’t think anyone is confusing you with one.

Aliade refers to a feminist ally: a man actively involved in the struggle for gender equality. Aliade has a derogatory connotation, and is used both within and outside the movement to indicate those men who strive to exhibit a deconstructed, often feigned, masculinity, like wearing black nail polish to be able to say “that you had that girl last night,” my friend Marina tells me.

Víctor Sánchez, the author of several books that reflect on the male condition, considers himself to be a man in the process of deconstruction. He also knows what it is like to be a “false” feminist ally. Ten years ago, when he was around 40, he experienced a confusing period in his life. “I was at a complete loss,” he explains over the phone. Suddenly he found himself with two children to care for and realized that it was no longer enough to follow the traditional model of fatherhood, in which his work consisted of “bringing home the bacon and little else.” On Facebook he found a group of men who met “to question the traditional model of masculinity,” to deconstruct themselves. Listening to his peers’ experiences and reading a lot about feminism led him to realize all the attitudes that he had inherited and assimilated from patriarchal society, with which he did not identify. He admits that was when he felt the greatest urge to be feminist, and to do it before anyone else: “I literally bought a purple scarf and wore an 8M badge. The problem is when these superficial changes come before a deep reflection. I understand that distrust on the part of feminism, and I share it.”

Clearly, there is a non-political reading of wearing nail polish as a man. There is a growing normalization, as exemplified by events such as the recent launch of a green nail polish, the product of a collaboration between musicians Pharrell Williams and Tyler, the Creator. This social acceptance has required the influence of feminist discourse and public figures willing to challenge the stereotypes of classic masculinity — celebrities like soccer player Borja Iglesias, singers Post Malone, Steven Tyler, Harry Styles, Bad Bunny and actor Chris Hemsworth have all adopted this ancient art, which became an exclusively female beauty ritual in the West in the twentieth century.

Back in Madrid, after having spent the weekend in Malaga, I receive a message from the editorial staff asking about the status of the article:

— I don’t want you to say yes, but: did you get beaten up for painting your nails?

— Nah, no luck there. I’m going to move on to the next phase, which is to get some gel nails, let’s see if that’s the way to go.

I write to my friend Marina to ask her for the contact information of a place she feels comfortable getting a manicure. In the meantime, I go to a relative’s house for lunch, having already removed the nail polish. I eat an orange for dessert, and while I’m peeling it, my relative notices a small trace of nail polish on my index finger.

— What happened to you there? Did you get it caught in a door?

— No, no, I painted my nails for an article thing, but come on, no one seems to care much.

— It’s just that now there are men who change their gender to get women’s benefits.

— No, this was just for an article.

— It has been in the news. 40 soldiers from Ceuta registered as women, without changing their names or partners. It’s so shameless.

— Well, I hadn’t heard about it.

The next day, my friend Beatriz gives me her cousin Alejandro’s number. “He’s a male Basque, and he polishes his nails,” she specifies. In addition, he works in a bank and is 25 years old. He recently got gel nails because he was biting his fingernails. “They look so nice with the nail polish that I don’t bite them,” he explains over the phone. He likes dark colors: military green, navy blue or brown. The first time he went, they wanted to give him long nails, like drag queen nails. “At first they assumed I was doing some kind of story. I tell them no, that I want them normal, that is, shorter.” The idea came from talking to some friends. “They told me: ‘Joe, man, they’re a mess.’ And I said, ‘Man, if I had them as nice as you do, I wouldn’t bite them either, you know what I mean?” Then someone came up with the idea of wearing nails, and he was convinced. Since he found the plastic aesthetics rather ugly, he decided to paint them. “While I’m at it, I’ll make them pretty.”

— And did your friends laugh about it?

— Nah, they were very cool about it. We belong to this generation that is growing up with other ideologies, we don’t get on each other’s case, we don’t get on each other’s case at all.

— And what about your family?

— They didn’t laugh either. Although it’s also true that some older men do say to me: ‘What is that? Is it so that you don’t bite them or what?

— What about at work?

— No one has ever said anything to me. Now you know, we’re living in a time when even if someone had a problem with it they wouldn’t say anything. Everybody knows that there are things that are socially unacceptable to say now.

Everybody knows, yes, although perhaps not everywhere. Manel, 26, lives in Konstanz in southern Germany. He has been painting his nails for years, and every now and then he has received an unfortunate comment. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but just the other day a colleague’s wife asked me if painted nails weren’t a woman’s thing.” And what did you say? “Well, 50 years ago they would have said the same thing about the jeans she was wearing at the time.”

Manel paints his nails black to match his clothes. For him, this is a performative act. He seeks to break down gender stereotypes and move toward a society in which male and female roles have been blurred. “In my case, I consider it a rather daring act,” he notes. In his opinion, there’s no way that painting one’s nails constitutes an exclusively aesthetic event. “It’s inevitably going to become a political choice because of how others are going to read it. You are going to be subjected to a series of questions and interpellations in which you are going to have to adopt a political discourse and stance,” he explains.

— The truth is that I have little reason to paint my nails.

— And why is that?

— We live in a world where [Spanish political party] Vox and Samantha Hudson coexist, and it’s going to cause a negative reaction on both sides. On the traditional side because the old prejudices are still there. On the left it has become a meme that is directly related to the aliade [pseudo-ally], and it is normal. I’ve seen guys with zero deconstructed masculinity who paint their nails because they know it’s something that a certain urban tribe likes, like wearing a Chikos Del Maiz t-shirt to pretend to be a communist.

— So why do you do it?

— Because I understand that at some point it is useful to normalize it for half of society, which doesn’t understand that this is normal.

Three days later, I am still waiting for a message from my friend Marina, so I decide to write her:

— Mari, did you not ever give me the nail place’s number?

— No! Sorry, I didn’t get a response, and it turns out that Eva has gone to live in China for two years.

— Really? Well, no worries then.

— Dani, you know you can get them done anywhere, right?

— Yeah, but I don’t know, I just don’t really feel like it.

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