61) Nail Polish

Isn’t it strange the things that go through your mind while you are waiting in the queue at the check out till in the supermarket? The other day while I was waiting to be served by a pretty young girl I saw that her nails were painted deep purple. I did not think it looked nice and thought to myself “Why doesn’t she paint them red?” and that got me to thinking ‘why do women paint their nails red’ After all red nails are just as unnatural as purple ones.

Later in the day I did a bit of investigation on the internet and found that Chinese woman have been painting their nails since at least 600 B.C. and that the colours red and black were used by the royalty. The Egyptians also used colours to signify social order, with red being at the top. So although it was still not clear to me why ancient women chose red maybe modern women by choosing red were just trying to prove that they were from a high social class.

Nowadays varnish comes in many many colours but I still remember the first time I saw blue, yellow, green and black varnish. I had a dear aunt called Amy who was attractive and full of fun. She also had beautiful nails. They were long and always perfectly manicured and painted red. Then she went on holiday to Italy and while she was there she discovered that Italian women were becoming very adventurous with their nail colours and so she brought home four or five different shades. She was, at the time working with us in my father’s, (her brother’s) café and she would come to work each day with a different colour on her fingertips. I remember one day just before she was about to go home someone asked her a question about her nail polish and to demonstrate some point or other she removed the colour from one finger and repainted it will a completely different colour. Then realising that she was going to be late for her bus she just ran off like that. She told us later that a man sitting beside her on the bus had spent ages looking at her hands before he got up the courage to ask her why not only were nine of her nails blue instead of red but even more puzzling was that the other one was yellow. She told him some long story about being a member of some secret organisation on a par with the Mafia but she did not think that he really believed her. He might have thought that she was a little mad though as he went and sat in another seat. But it did give her an idea for some more fun. After that she would often come to work with a different colour on each nail.

When it comes to lips one can at least see why we chose to paint them red. After all most of our mouths are a pinkish colour and as that colour tends to fade with age so I suppose that we paint them red to make ourselves look younger. Although I don’t think it always works one can understand the logic but I can see no logic for red fingernails.