When I was in preschool, one of my friends would always come to school with his nails painted. I asked him why he got his nails painted because I had only ever seen women with their nails painted. His fingertips were a mesmerizing shade of blue, and I knew that I needed to get my nails painted as well. On the ride home from school, I asked my grandmother to take me to get them painted, but she insisted that having one’s nails painted is reserved for only women. As years passed and I got older, the stigmas around being a straight male with his fingers painted did not dissipate. Having painted nails became more associated with homosexuality and femininity in grade school, and I lacked the confidence and comfortability to ever have my nails painted. I was still curious how my nails would feel and look if they were painted, but the enthusiasm that I had when I was 3 had vanished. This summer, however, my girlfriend asked me if she could paint my nails a clear coat, and I readily agreed as that same curiosity I had when I was 3 began to flow through me again. While I was intently watching the television, she painted one of my nails orange, and I actually did not mind at all. The stigmas around men having their nails painted have changed so drastically in pop culture that now even my grandfather has come around to getting manicures.
This change has come about due to the trendiness of straight men having their nails painted that has swept the internet. Due to the misogyny and discrimination that is rampant across search engines, most of the first results that show up when I searched for men with nail paint are of male celebrities that do not identify as heterosexual. One of the major factors that was preventing straight men from painting their nails and keeping it a nice pop culture artifact is the lack of representation and stereotyping perpetuated by search engines. These engines take identities and associate them with stereotypes which reinforces and affirms the stereotypes. While not as damaging or prevalent as the reinforcement of racism through algorithms, the suppression of all types of men participating in trends, activities, and forms of expression deemed to be only for women and non-heterosexual men prevents children from having influences who represent them and their desires (2018). This perpetuates the stigmas and stereotypes around certain forms of expression such as painting one’s nails. I had gone from a person who desperately wanted blue nails to a person who had internalized the stereotypes that prevented my grandmother from allowing me to paint my nails. Nowadays, apps such as TikTok are flooded with videos of all types of men who have painted nails
Scenes such as the goth scene as well as the influx of identity-challenging celebrities helped change the stigmas surrounding straight men having nails painted. While gender-bending celebrities are not a new phenomenon, the number of gender-bending celebrities seems to have increased in recent times. This has helped to question hetero-masculinity and hetero-femininity that reinforce stereotypes such as men being dominant and women being flamboyant (2015). Furthermore, the normalization of straight men participating in other forms of expression that are thought to be female such as wearing skirts makes straight men wearing nail polish not seem as outlandish. Widespread support and attention to celebrities such as Harry Styles and Post Malone help to outweigh the bigotry that has arisen on the internet due to the popularization of feminism and other social justice movements (2015). Hate is rampant on the internet, but the hate just draws attention to trends and allows them to be coopted by the mainstream. This hate polarizes people who ordinarily would be neutral about phenomena such as straight men painting their nails. Additionally, over quarantine, people began to consider new forms of self-expression because of boredom. Many who would not normally express themselves by painting their nails decided to try it. My grandfather, who had only ever wanted a clear coat of polish on his nails, warmed up to the idea of painting Italian flag colors on one of his nails. If it had not been for quarantine and the countless hours to fill, then I am confident that my grandfather would never have requested his nails to be painted a color. I am glad that many of the stigmas surrounding men who have painted nails have eroded and any 3 year old who wants blue nails can get them.
Noble, S. (2018). How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. Algorithms of Oppression, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1pwt9w5.11
Banet-Weiser, S., & Author Sarah Banet-Weiser Director of the School of Communication at USC Annenberg. (2015, January 21). Sarah Banet-Weiser. Culture Digitally. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://culturedigitally.org/2015/01/popular-misogyny-a-zeitgeist/.
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