NO MORE THAN ONE COLOR AT A TIME, PLEASE

I always notice other women's nails and manicures. Could it be because I've spent so much time, energy and money on my own? I hadn't given it much thought until I saw a post on The Beauty Insiders - you're missing out on some fun if you haven't read this blog by the beauty writers from Glamour. Before writing this post I thought about the history of my nails, back to the late 80s, when many of us in our first career jobs discovered that we could afford silk manicures from cheap nail salons. Ah, the glamour! I was the renegade in my office; I didn't wear pink or red polish - I opted for OPI's Gold Digger. It was a gorgeous shade of golden brown that wouldn't raise an eyebrow today but was definitely risky in those days.

Silk, acrylic, gel, silk, natural, acrylic, gel, silk, natural . . . And the color wheel seemed to follow the nails - red, black, sheer or bright, dark, nude. That was the fun part. But who doesn't remember the pain - both physical and fashion - of taking off a set of acrylics. Never to wear them again, because of how they made our poor nails suffer when we took them off. Gel nails were next and they weren't too bad, once I got used to the drying process - you know, the little broiler with the purple light inside. But in time my manicurist tired of repairing too many 'lifted' nails. Why, she asked, do I even wear artificial nails if I want my nails to look completely natural. So I renounced all artificial nails and went au naturel. My nails were free! Of course, I went through the cycle again - I'm back at the freedom stage.

I'll have to talk about the color cycle in another post. Remember the excitement when Urban Decay first came out? It's become a story in my family - remember when Carolyn had black nails and pink hair? And her husband didn't even mind?

By the way, yesterday I saw the most beautiful manicure - nails that came just to the fingertip, were perfectly shaped, and painted a pale shade of pink. The ironic part - the woman with the perfect nails is my dog's vet. Somehow a beautiful manicure on a vet doesn't compute.

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