In recent decades, though, that narrative has dissipated. “The rise of beauty blogging and DIY culture has reduced the stigma of pop-on manicures and other at-home treatments,” says Suzanne E. Shapiro, a historian and former researcher at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In her 2014 book “Nails: The Story of the Modern Manicure,” one of the few substantive volumes on the topic, Shapiro traces the origins of the contemporary manicure from ancient Egypt and China through the Golden Age of Hollywood to more recent trends in nail design. “Being able to show your peers your beauty savvy and ability to transform between wildly different looks has a cultural currency to it now,” she tells me. “Pop-on nails are a way for an individual to define herself/himself/themselves one day, pop ’em off, and start anew the next.”
As with the wider business of cosmetics, decorating your fingernails is a paradoxical domain that has a lot more to it than its glossy appearance. Over the past century, the nail industry in the West has aligned itself around society’s dominant definition of femininity, profiting off of and reinforcing that idealized, though ever-evolving, image. Ironically, these same beauty products, which are so overtly linked to specific gender presentations, enable a radical kind of liberation from those norms.
In other words, that means pop-on manicures are quintessentially queer. And LGBTQ+ people have artfully worn variations of them as subversive fashion devices long before game-changing upstarts like Static came on the scene. In fact, the fluid beauty styles of the moment owe a debt to drag culture, in particular, which many trend-chasing beauty brands are now co-opting.
Queens of all stripes have a storied history with fake nails (and, of course, fake nail gloves) in all manner of impossibly long, bejeweled and avant-garde variations. In the words of the endlessly eloquent Alaska Thunderfuck, who dedicated an entire song to press-on manicures: “If you’re not wearing nails, you’re not doing drag … Put on some fucking nails.” Queens often sport self-made sets, or if they’ve got the budget, custom nails from a head-turning designer such as Ava Fierce, a teen whose high-profile clients include Ongina, Naomi Smalls, Kameron Michaels, Miz Cracker and others. (That’s all fine and well if you’re a Drag Race contestant; try typing 1,200 words with those bedeviling talons strapped on, as I just did.)
Yet despite the ubiquity of drag in our collective consciousness, its broader influence on our culture often goes unacknowledged. Even less so are the contributions and radical legacy of trans, non-binary, and gender-fluid people, who are still rarely depicted in beauty campaigns.
I don’t identify as a man. I don’t identify as a woman. I identify as someone who likes wearing stiletto nails. People like me, we learn personal makeup, nail and dress rituals alone in our rooms and from chosen families. We steal cis-, heteronormative tools, paints, colors, and glitter. Whether it’s with Sharpies or Static pop-ons, we make femme magic when we walk out the door and punk the system every day. And we look fabulous doing it.
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