The controversial manicure

This is a three-way love story. Between me, my nails and my nail artist. It may not seem so at first, but hear me out.

I used to have awful nails. I still have difficult nails, because they are short and narrow. Well, before, they were short, narrow, soft and always exfoliating. My hands looked like the ones of a 12 year-old biting his nails.

In the spring of 2016, my friend Ilinca found the Facebook page of a nail artist, called Kitty Claws. I was kind of a virgin when it came to nail-salon-manicures because it felt so impersonal. It was like going to get a haircut – which I always find difficult – you imagine something, explain it and then leave with a totally different haircut than you wanted. It also felt impersonal because these people working in nail salons – in Romania at least – do this thing daily and for hundreds and hundreds of clients – you’re just a hand in a bunch (wanted to say name or face, but having so many clients, I really don’t think they actually remember you). How are they going to take care of your nails? How are they going to nurture them back to health, when I don’t think they really care whether you have healthy nails or not. You can tell, it felt fake to me. I wanted healthy nails, not just long nails at all costs.

Coming back to Kitty Claws – I loved her page. I am not one to like traditional or rather classic manicures – I love everything special, but I am quite particular. For like a year I was obsessed with this Japanese nail art blog called Nail Common. I just loved the minimalistic style and I thought: “These are the nails I would like to have”. Kitty Claws didn’t just have minimalistic nails on her page, but had a range of styles and manicures which really showed her talent. I think I stalked her page for like 6 months before actually deciding to go.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, it was just me being scared of disappointment (cause I had so much build-up in those 6 months of stalking 😀 ). But I had announced to my friends at the beginning of summer: if my nails won’t grow until fall, I’m going to the professional. And they didn’t. Actually, they became so frustrating! I think three weeks prior to my first appointment I had tried almost daily to put on some beige nail polish, but it kept falling off the next freaking day.

So, because I am a control freak, before actually going, I sent her a picture of my nails and their back story. She was so nice and so genuinely interested in taking care of my nails that I went to my first appointment without a doubt in mind. She was even nicer in real life and I felt like she was my type of person. Not only that, she nursed my nails back to health, making them look good in the process. I will be posting all my manicures since I started going to her back in October, so you can see my progress.

Two appointments later it was Christmas and my nails were already longer and healthier. They now look nothing like my nails – which is the best thing ever. I ran into a friend of mine on the subway and she said that she wasn’t sure at first that it was me because she didn’t recognize my nails. I’d say that’s a good thing.

My first manicure by Kitty Claws (see how small they were?)

Getting back to the title of this post. It was my second appointment with Kitty Claws and I wanted a burgundy manicure, as close as possible to this one above. My dream did not come true, however, because she didn’t recommend dark colors for my nails. They generally make things look smaller and our objective wasn’t to make my nails look tiny (on the contrary!). So, trying to find a compromise, I browsed through my hundreds of pictures saved from my favorite nail blog and found something awesome. It was so cute and turned out so great! I was so excited – it was so me! I couldn’t believe that my tiny nails could look so good! And it was something different than anything I’d ever seen before. I loved it!

The reactions of the people who saw my new manicure were split – either they liked it or they didn’t understand it. I found that I was really affected by the latter reaction, meaning that it got me thinking: I mean, okay, I can get something not being your style – not liking it, but to not understand it was a different story. Some girls asked me what was wrong with my nails, what went wrong during my manicure. What can you reply to that? Cause it was clearly meant as an insult, but the only thing it managed was to make me think less of the person who had said it.

I think that what shocked me the most was this narrow mindedness I discovered. We live in this world where everybody, every woman, every girl wants to be seen as a fashionista and follows the latest trends – from distressed jeans to turquoise hair, and some nails with random pattern are not understood? What I got from this is that some people can’t accept things that don’t fall into their standards of normalcy. If I’d had a pastel colored French manicure no one would’ve commented at all. But the randomness threw some people off.

Don’t get me wrong – their comments did not make me love my manicure less. In fact, I love that I got a reaction, that I got them talking, that I got them judging! That means I’m not boring and the thought pleases me. 🙂

Ah, it’s so good to be back! You can tell I’ve missed this. 🙂

See you soon!

Have a great one!

–

Andreea.