I started using Pinterest a few months ago out of ABJECT BOREDOM and to my surprise, really enjoy it. It is diverting and I feel like (pardon the overserious and overused term) curating boards is a really interesting and fun way to display your tastes.
At the same time I got into Pinterest, I got into painting my nails. There could be a connection there, because nail art seems to be at least 18% of what Pinterest is for (46% cat pictures, 23% for “thinspiration”, yeuch; 10% for recipes no one will ever really try, 3% life hacks that aren’t really all that helpful). But remember correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation, and the abject boredom that let me down this path may be a better explanation. [Also, I started to find that having polish on my nails made them just a tiny bit blunter when it comes to scratching my skin, so it was actually helping my eczema situation so long as I still kept them pretty short.]
Anyway, a short while ago I pinned this photo I found on a search for “gray polish.”
I really just wanted to look for nice gray polishes, and pinned this because that is a great shade. The glitter part of the look wasn’t really relevant to me. Although I find glitter nail polish the most tolerable form of glitter (because it is trapped in the polish and therefore less of a sinister cancer), I still pretty much hate glitter. [And even in polish form it's a pernicious beast, requiring extra effort with the remover, and once you FINALLY dissolve that ish with buckets of acetone, the glitter is FREE to take up permanent residence on every other thing in your home.]
HOWEVER!
This quickly became my most popular pin of all time. So popular I had to change my email notification settings because my inbox was blowing up. [Does America still say "blowing up?" I am not asking because of recent acts of horrific terrorism, but that is now making me think I should delete all of this and choose more benign wording. No, I really want to know about American slang. There's all this side eye and shade throwing and "go home [insert misbehaving noun], you’re drunk” on Twitter and I feel like a mom trying to decipher the conversation between her teenage kids’ friends in the backseat of her SUV crossover. SIGH.]
ANYWAY, I decided that 326 (and counting) repins and another 100-some likes meant that I should give this look a try. So I bought me some gray nail polish (Essie Power Clutch, which is actually a good bit darker than the shade up there but is my new favorite, but more on that later) and some gold glitter polish (Revlon Top Speed Hearts of Gold FX, which literally has glitter hearts in it, which is pretty unfortunate but I was able to dodge them). And I queued up some old episodes of Happy Endings and had myself a little polish party.
AND IT IS AMAZING.
Apologies for subjecting you to my crappy cell-phone photography, not to mention hideous monster hands, stubby nails, and imperfect polish application. It’s especially embarrassing when you scroll between the photo I pinned and my photo. I have no fucking CLUE how the people who post your average “fingers clutching the polish bottle” photos on Pinterest manage to get everything looking so tidy and perfect. I am not those people.
But, one more note before I hit publish: when I was writing up my hierarchy of makeup spending, I said that I don’t normally spend a lot on nail polish. ALL THAT HAS CHANGED. [And boy do I hate how often my makeup spending seems to shift in that direction compared to the other way around!] In South Africa, the cheap-ass nailpolish is much worse than it is in the states to the point of being unusable. And moreover, the price difference between mid-range polishes (like the Revlon I used) and your more fancy OPIs and Essies is about 10 Rand or a little over 1 US dollar. So it’s worth it to go up.
Because I have found, using polish more, and more importantly, using it on my fingernails which are up in my face all the time rather than my distant and forgiving toenails, that higher quality polish really does make a difference. Mainly, it is easier to apply evenly and neatly (like, I couldn’t believe how nicely Power Clutch went on, because I normally find it impossible to put on creme finish polishes without super streakiness), and it lasts longer than 15 minutes without chipping. Also, generally less likely to be made entirely out of poison, if you care about that sort of thing.
So all this is an incredibly convoluted way to say, check out my mani!
