Transcript | Ep. 83: How to Nail Manicures

Cristen: Hey Unladies. Before we get started with this episode, we just need to take a second to acknowledge just how much the world has changed between when we were recording the interviews for this episode. Of course, we're talking about Covid 19. Caroline and I and our Unladylike producers are all essentially sheltering in place right now. And we just wanted to reach out and say hello and that we hope you all are safe and have plenty of toilet paper to get you through these just very, very strange and uncertain times. And manicures might seem like the most insignificant topic to discuss on this podcast amidst a global pandemic. However, we hope that these stories will maybe provide some comfort to you. A little inspiration, maybe for some quarantimes nail art of your own. And we also wanted to share some ways that you can support the kinds of folks that we are talking about today in this episode.

Caroline: Because this episode is all about nails, we wanted to offer up some resources for nail salon workers who are out of work because of the coronavirus. You can donate to the One Fair Wage Fund, which directly supports a variety of tipped workers, including stylists and manicurists. Another option is the Nail Salon Workers Resilience Fund, put together by the New York Healthy Nail Salon Coalition. Funds will be distributed directly to nail salon workers.

Cristen: And if you have an existing relationship with a nail tech, you can also reach out to them about buying a gift certificate for now to help them stay afloat for now … We’ll put links to these in our show notes and on unladylike.co under this episode. And if you want to connect with the Unladylike community head over to our private Facebook group. Unladlies there have been doing an incredible job of sharing what’s happening with them and tips and tricks of surviving through this very uncertain time. And with that, Caroline shall we get on with the show?

Caroline: Let's do it.

[Stinger]

Tembe: Getting acrylics and wearing them consistently. I just felt sly, like I felt like a bad bitch all the time. I loved it. I just loved the look. I love the feel. I like the way my hand sounded when I texted. I like the way that everything about them. I love them. My nails are always done. To know me is to know my nails are always done. I can't go. There is no situation where I don't have my nails done at this point.

[Theme music]

Cristen: Hey y’all and welcome to Unladylike, where we find out what happens when women break the rules … and sometimes break a nail in the process. I’m Cristen

Caroline: I’m Caroline, and y’know, this episode is really on brand for us, considering that our logo is a polished middle finger.

Cristen: Which stands in contrast to our own middle fingers, so Caroline, before we go another SECOND in this episode, I gotta ask you — how are your nails looking today? Are you sporting a commemorative mani??

Caroline: Yeah I think you could say just ragged from all of the hand sanitizing I’ve been doing.

Cristen: Ooh

Caroline: What about you?

Cristen: You know, I don’t know that they’re falling apart per se, but I am rocking my typical 5-year-old look, which is just clipped short, unpolished, and just visible speckled around, to be totally honest

Caroline: See people, this is why we call the experts, like the bad bitch ya just heard. Tembe Denton-Hurst is a writer for New York Magazine’s The Strategist. She's also a fake nails fanatic and wants to make one thing very clear.

Tembe: If you're a white woman under you're under 30, living in L.A., walking around with acrylics. My only request that you don't say that you got that idea from Kylie Jenner or the Kardashians or anybody that looks like them because it's not true.

Cristen: And today's episode is all about why that's not true. Because even if you don’t know a stiletto nail from a coffin cut, it’s important to understand how women of color have been the most pivotal innovators and trend setters in modern manicure history

Caroline: Then there’s the nail salon itself and the technicians on the other side of the counter.

Adele: Vietnamese nail salons dominate the industry because of Vietnamese women. Nails wasn't something that they learned in Vietnam or is a part of Vietnamese culture. It was something that they picked up in the U.S. But Vietnamese women are businesswomen, and that's something that's in the DNA.

Cristen: In her documentary, Nailed It, Adele Free Pham connects the dots of how 20 Vietnamese women invented the American nail salon and helped facilitate a whole new statement-nail culture. Adele’s also going to fill us in on why neighborhood nail salons have been a lifeline for generations of refugees and immigrants.

Caroline: Then, we’ll hear from Tembe about how her fake nails express who she is as a black lesbian.

Cristen: It’s all to find out: How have women of color shaped the meaning of manicures?

[Stinger]

Caroline: Fifty years ago, stand-alone nail salons barely existed! Yes, you could paint your nails at home, of course. But if you wanted to get your nails done done, you’d have to go to a high-end salon, and as Adele explains, it was not cheap.

Adele: Nails was something that was reserved for the jet set, for wealthy women, for actresses like Tippi Hedren, Barbra Streisand, Cher. It was something that was geared towards women with money and time. And the prices of a manicure were much, much higher at that time, too.

Cristen: Before neighborhood nail salons started popping up around Los Angeles in the late 70s and early 80s, a fresh set could easily run you $200.

Caroline: The 1970s was also when fake nails really started popping off, thanks in part to the invention of the French manicure. And that’s also the decade when Vietnamese women started getting in on the nails game.

Adele: There was that stereotype that when you told people that you were Vietnamese, they did ask sometimes if you owned a nail salon. So that correlation between Vietnamese people and nail salons has always been there growing up. And I just wondered why. I mean, why do so many Vietnamese people do this thing?

Caroline: There are more than 100,000 standalone nail salons in the US, and as of 2015, over half of all nail techs working in them are Vietnamese. But like many first-gen Vietnamese-Americans, Adele was uneasy with the nail salon association. She grew up pretty disconnected from her Vietnamese heritage but was well aware of how “Asian nail salons” were negatively stereotyped as sketchy, unfriendly and unhygienic.

Cristen: And that’s why, when Adele was a teenager, and her dad — who’s a Vietnamese refugee — encouraged her to go work with some of her cousins who owned a couple of nail salons, she was like, yeahhh, no.

Adele: I didn't want to be touching anybody's feet and I correlated that nail salon with pedicure and scrubbing people's feet as well. So it was sort of a double edged sword. This uncomfortability not understanding the culture, even though I'm a part of the culture. And then also not wanting to have to perform these these bodily services on other women being forced to, in a sense. So that was the oppressive point in my mind, like, you know, just being stuck in a salon and constantly working on other people's beauty.

Caroline: Although Adele became a filmmaker instead of a nail tech, it wasn’t like she didn’t grapple with her ideas about Vietnamese culture and nail salons. So, to sort it all out, Adele got behind the camera to make her documentary Nailed It.

Adele: And when I started, I thought that I was going to expose more of a - a hazardous chemical story inside of the nail salon. And although that's a part of the journey, it's not at the forefront of the film because it's not necessarily what I found.

Cristen: What Adele found was a series of simultaneously horrifying and serendipitous events that catalyzed today’s multibillion-dollar nail industry … and some of the very best nail art on Instagram.

Caroline: So, how did all that happen? What compelled Vietnamese women to create the stand-alone nail salon culture and make it affordable?

[Time machine sound]

Cristen: Well, first off - a little bit of history that starts not in the US, but in Vietnam. In 1975, after decades of war there, Saigon fell to communist forces. That year alone, the United States sponsored the American resettlement of 125,000 Vietnamese refugees — including the group of women who would eventually launch the modern nail industry.

Adele: I mean, it was just absolute chaos, but they were able to get to the U.S. early. And from there, they went to a refugee camp in Guam, but then they were able to get to California. They were placed in a refugee camp outside of Sacramento. And they went from being upper class women, married to South Vietnamese military officers to having absolutely nothing. So that was, of course, a shock and a trauma.

Caroline: At that Sacramento refugee camp, called Hope Village, the Vietnamese women met a Hollywood A-lister and unlikely advocate: actress Tippi Hedren.

Cristen: Tippi is most famous for her roles in Alfred Hitchcock films like The Birds. But in her downtime in the mid-70s, she volunteered at Hope Village, first bringing in typists and tailors to teach the refugees new skills. Then, she noticed something.

Adele: These 20 Vietnamese refugee women were looking at her nails and constantly commenting at how beautiful they were. So it just clicked in her head that manicuring was something that she would be able to facilitate for them by bringing her personal manicurist, Dusty Coots, to the refugee camp every week to get these women trained in manicuring. So she didn't just throw them out or they didn't just go out into the world and try to find manicuring jobs, which was very hard at the time. There were very few, if no nails-only nail salons. She actually placed them in beauty salons.

Caroline: This first group of 20 refugees-turned-manicurists soon began branching out on their own to take their trade beyond high-end Beverly Hills beauty parlors. A few eventually opened standalone nail salons around California and began building their own family-run operations.

Cristen: The strategy makes sense, too. Like this was a cash business that paid pretty well at the time and didn’t require fluency in English. And once the women broke into the market, they created more opportunities for the men to get involved, too.

Adele: There was a barrier of entry for these men to find any jobs in this country because they just weren't wanted in the workforce. It's threatening to see all these people come over. And there's the thought that, oh, well, they'll do my job for half as much or why are these people, you know, getting these resources when I need that for - for my family to survive? But women are able to slip under the radar a little bit. And because this is such a gendered industry geared towards women, it was less threatening. So that's another way that this incredible adaptation came into play through the nail salon. And a lot of times when their men couldn't find work, women invite them in, train them to be manicurists or allow their husbands to be, you know, the manager of the salon. But you see women creating employment for everybody, including the men

Caroline: Families told folks back home about the nail salons, then helped to get them trained when they got to the States. From there, more salons opened as more Vietnamese immigrated to the US.

Adele: When you think about the job opportunities that are open to immigrants and non-speaking refugees, what is there really? So it just became immediately a way for this culture to regroup. Being led by women to open businesses that could sustain their families and also bring their extended families into the country. And they just got on it right away.

Cristen: So before we get more into the rise of a standalone nail salons, especially like the discount nail salons, we did want to talk a little bit more about Tippi because we're curious whether from your point of view, if her relationship with that initial group of refugees was a white savior narrative that white folks often love to tell themselves, or if it seemed like this was more a woman using her privilege in a positive way, like how would you kind of describe that relationship?

Adele: I think it's both. But Tippi using her privilege in a positive way is what we can really take away from that story. And from my research, there are no Vietnamese women doing this rather obscure thing at the time before Tippi intervened and really did a lot to not only educate these women in manicuring, but to get them jobs. So I will always respect that. And, you know, I do get some backlash because I am perpetuating this white savior myth. But if it's true, you know, you have to pay respect to that and you have to respect the person that really was thinking outside of the box to help people that she didn't know that she saw were going through a desperate situation. But on the other side of that, you can't give all of the credit to Tippi. I don't think that Tippi had a sense that Vietnamese women were going to totally revolutionize the industry by dropping prices and opening nail salons in as far flung places as, you know, Minnesota and Alaska.

Cristen: Opening nail salons in far flung places became so common, in fact, that there's even a phrase for this in Vietnamese, which translates to "doing nails across the states"

Caroline: But revolutionizing the industry wasn’t limited to spreading out geographically. They successfully lobbied the California government to provide nail tech licensing exams in Vietnamese. They also opened beauty and nail schools specifically for their community and broke into manufacturing nail supplies and products as well.

Cristen: In the 80s and 90s, the number of licensed manicurists tripled in the US. And Vietnamese nail salons led the way in lowering the price of getting your nails done, down to just $15 for a simple paint job.

Adele: Price dropping is a phenomenon that happens in industry in Vietnam. So if you have the same product as your neighbor, how you're going to compete with them is just to drop the price. And I think Vietnamese people were able to take this to an extreme because they had that family network in the salon and, you know, almost like a desperate work ethic at times to take on the difference in prices with the amount of hours they were willing to spend inside of the salon working 24/7. And because of that, you know, there is this perception and an overriding stereotype of Asian people in general that they will cut corners and drop prices to a degree where no one else can compete. And, you know, there - there is some truth to that statement because they were doing what they had to do in order to survive and to make room for this whole new nails-only industry that so many people and families were a part of.

Caroline: Sociologist Susan Erickson described the Vietnamese nail boom of the 80s and 90s as the "McNailing" of the business. A luxury beauty treatment became quick and affordable for the masses.

Cristen: It came with costs, though. Like Adele said, these family operations ran long hours, sometimes in unventilated spaces with toxic products. And price dropping made it tougher for manicurists and nail techs to make a living.

Adele: But, you know, again, it's a nuanced story. And from what I saw is extended networks of Vietnamese people really helping each other. And it just speaks to the way immigrant communities are able to come together and work together in a way to make a fledgling business really run in ways that Americans might not be able to. I mean, when you look at a nail salon, everybody's speaking the same language. They have a system for how customers are going to get their treatments done, and they have a system for what they're going to eat for lunch that day. A lot of times workers will, you know, be family members or extended family and living in a house together and come to work together in a van that, you know, the owners are driving back and forth every day to the neighborhoods that they live in. So it shows just how the socialization of immigrants are able to develop an industry beyond what it was before they took a hold of it.

Caroline: But Vietnamese women weren't the only ones innovating in the manicure business. Korean and Latinx immigrants were opening their own nail salons. And also in the 1980s, black women started taking nail art to the next level.

Cristen: That’s after the break. Plus, we've got an appointment at a magical place called Mantrap.

Caroline: Don’t peel off!

[Midroll ad 1]

Adele: Black women's culture really invested in this new kind of nail salon and took it the nail art to another level too. Before the 80s, you don't really see the kind of wild nail art that we're still re-creating and celebrating today.

Cristen: We're back with documentary filmmaker Adele Free Pham.

Caroline: In the 1970s disco queens like Donna Summer and Diana Ross were flashing their statement nails, and with the invention of modern acrylic nails in 1978, black women started to take their nail art to bolder - and longer - lengths.

Cristen: As best Adele can tell, everyday black women really started mixing it up with manicures in the 1980s at a place called Mantrap in south LA. It was the first nail salon chain to open up in black neighborhoods for black women.

Caroline: Mantrap grew out of a manicurist-client relationship. Olivette Robinson was in the beauty biz, and a Vietnamese refugee named Charlie Vo did her nails. The two became friends, and they decided to combine their powers and open a one-stop beauty shop.

Cristen: We want to play you a little clip from the doc, so here’s Charlie and Olivette from Adele’s documentary, Nailed It, talking about opening Mantrap in their neighborhood. The first voice you'll hear is Olivette.

[Nailed it clip]

Olivette: We had got the place, but we didn’t have a name.

Charlie: Right, right

Olivette: We gotta make ‘em pretty..

Charlie: Something sexy

Olivette: Yeah, we gotta — making these women pretty, getting them together so they can go out and trap a man. And we just kept on talking and talking. And pretty soon, I don’t know which of us said, Mantrap! And there was - there was the name. On our window we had a picture with the lady here with the spiderweb, and there’s the man trapped in the spiderweb. Mantrap.

Caroline: After opening their first Mantrap nail salon, Charlie and Olivette opened up nine more

Adele: And it isn't just an all Vietnamese nail salon moving into a black neighborhood. It's a nail salon that's being cultivated in a multicultural environment where one of the owners is a black woman and the other one is a Vietnamese refugee woman. And because of that friendship, you know, everybody wanted to come hang out. It was a hangout place. Right. So even more than, you know, just paying somebody to do your nails, you're coming there to socialize, to talk, to see what's going on. You know, it becomes like the center of the neighborhood. Literally the salon of a working-class neighborhood in Southern California in the early 80s.

Cristen: So Mantrap offered up not only this social spot with affordable manicures, but they also introduced nail art that was new and out of the box — like, snakeskin and rhinestones.

Caroline: Their most sought-after style? Long, sculpted acrylic nails. Something that those fancy white-lady salons weren't touching.

Adele: It was curated and desired by black women who really are the driving force in a lot of popular culture and beauty standards without getting a lot of credit. So it was important for me to establish that without black women's culture, the Mantrap phenomenon wouldn't have happened. And without this deep friendship between people from two separate groups that are often seen, you know, as acrimonious with each other, the nail salon may not be - the Vietnamese nail salon may not be what it is today at all, because, you know, they opened up this entirely new market and innovated what was being done with nails in Tippi's time to the wild nail art of the 80s that has influenced fashion and, of course, hip-hop culture.

Caroline: But the indisputable icon of that era’s wildest nail art was the world’s fastest woman, Florence Griffith Joyner, aka Flo Jo.

[Archival clip]

Bob Costas: With a fresh, new confidence that’s easy to understand, Florence Griffith Joyner races to change the silver medal image. Her 1984 fingernails have been trimmed and are most definitely accented in the color gold. Her self-designed outfits get your attention, too. The Florence motto? Dress to look good; look good to feel good; and feel good to run fast.

Cristen: Flo Jo had started doing her own nails as a teen, and she worked as a nail tech to support herself while training for the 1988 Olympics. And it was at those Olympic Games where she broke records and snagged FOUR gold medals … while racing in her signature 3-inch acrylics, which were painted red, white, blue and gold for the occasion.

Caroline: Yeah, gold because she was gonna win. But, those colorful nails and equally colorful running gear made it easy for sportscasters, most of whom were white dudes, to dismiss her talents — you know, they would comment on her “dragon-lady fingernails” and call her things like “la tigresse noire"...

[Archival clip]

Florence Griffith Joyner: Someone made a comment in the paper years ago, ‘Well, she won’t be able to run fast with fingernails that long and her hair that way and with those outfits,’ but I just wanted to tell him that it doesn’t matter what you wear, it’s what you believe that you can do.

Cristen: Caroline, another iconic athlete who gets a ton of scrutiny for her nail fashion choices? Serena Williams. Yeah y’all, she became a licensed nail tech in 2010, partly for the fun of it and as part of building her beauty brand. She keeps her acrylics a lot shorter than Flo Jo's, which makes sense since she has to hang onto a tennis racquet. Nonetheless, her manicures have been called “outrageous” and “rule breaking.”

Caroline: Which brings us to our next guest, Tembe Denton-Hurst, who totally gets wanting to wear fake nails whether you’re competing at Wimbledon or barely shuffling around your house during a quarantine. Tembe is a beauty and culture writer, and her Instagram is poppin’ with tons of shots of her and her acrylics always on point

Cristen: We found Tembe through an essay she wrote for the site THEM, titled Sex with Acrylics Is Safe, No Matter What the Memes Say. We talked with Tembe via Skype, and we’re gonna get into the sex part a little later. First she breaks down her nail addiction

Tembe: I call it addicted because I legitimately cannot function without them. Like I had my nails off for all of a day. And I was like, this is the ghetto-est shit I've ever experienced in my whole entire life. Never again will I ever, ever, ever do this to myself like I was. I cannot ever, ever, ever go without my nails.

Cristen: Each month Tembe spends upwards of $120 on nails, and when we talked to her in early March — pre mass quarantines — she had her nail appointments booked through June!

Tembe: I think that my quote unquote addiction started right after I got my first set. It was like this light purple color. It was like these light purple nails. And they were so pretty. And the amount of compliments I got, just like how I would look in my hands. And I was like, wow, your hands are kind of nice. I kind of just liked myself a little bit more somehow because I had cute nails.

Caroline: When Tembe was growing up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, getting a set was almost like a rite of passage.

Tembe: I think that for me I just thought that to have nails was to be grown. I thought that like the cool older girls wore nails. Or was it was just like you getting your nails done, getting your eyebrows done, you wanted to make a hair salon, getting your hair pressed out. I just thought that it was just like part of the routine of being like hyper feminine or like looking all dressed up or as my mom would say, “you're all dolled up.”

Cristen: But Tembe’s Mom wasn’t down for her dolling up her nails with acrylics. She was barely letting Tembe get her brows waxed!

Caroline: Tembe noticed, though, that the meaning of a manicure suddenly changed when the family moved from Brooklyn to Long Island.

Tembe: So that was back in like the early 2000s where I think nails were considered like ghetto, essentially. Like there was no, like no, like people weren't wearing acrylics like they're wearing acrylics now. Now, like, as my best friend, every white woman in L.A. under the age of 30 wears acrylics and so and or like the one of my coworkers that sits next to me, she's white and she wears acrylics. And that is something that I would not have seen when I was that age, much less like probably in my early, like early years of college. White women weren't really wearing acrylics like that. Like I think that that's been a more recent development.

Cristen: Well with all these Kylie Jenners getting into acrylics, when do you see it cross into cultural appropriation?

Tembe: I think when we see it kind of start to, for me at least, take on a space where I'm like, this is past appreciation and this is appropriation, is when people or media is crediting white people who have started to partake in that versus, you know, turning the attention to the black creators, into the black people who have been who have created this and who still participate in this vibrant culture. Right. So for me, I think when people are like, oh, yes, like now we're seeing acrylics blow up everywhere. Thanks to Kylie Jenner wearing acrylics. It's like no like Kylie Jenner's wearing acrylics because Heather Sanders and Black Chyna who she was hanging out with wore acrylics. You know, like it's not Kylie Jenner found acrylics underneath a rock somewhere in Calabasas and was like, wow acrylics. I'm gonna put that on my nails like, no. I think we really need to be responsible. So I think that like when people are like, you know, salivating over a look that they were calling ghetto on other people or, oh, your nails are so long. Oh, that's so ghetto or oh, my God, how do you live like that? Or I could never do that. And then, you know, we're seeing a couple of years later now, that same girl now wants to go to whatever nail salons she can find to get these crazy long nails

Caroline: So like, where is that line, do you think, that leads people to — white people — to dismiss things like acrylics as ghetto? I mean, sort of the unspoken thing here is just racism. But like, I'm hoping you can speak a little more to that idea of - of the perception of acrylics in particular as ghetto.

Tembe: I think it has to do with the idea of like the long nails, the designed nails, you just see. It's like over the top. And so I think that if for black women specifically, I think that there's been a label of over-the-top as kind of a tagline. There's the angry black woman, the loud black woman, the black woman who's too much, who does too much, who’s ghetto. It's like it's the exact opposite of shrinking yourself and fitting in and getting smaller and smaller and smaller until you're palatable. And so I think that to be expressive in any way with your nails, with your hair, whether it's like crazy pastel colors or you're doing your hair a certain way or if you're kind of you want to be seen and you want to be noticed. I think that that is almost seen as ghetto like for black women to show up and to be present and loud and vibrant and to be vivid is I think like almost anything that can be looked at historically as ghetto is almost attached to that or attached to innovative ways to survive. And obviously racism. That’s the big thing.

Caroline: We’re gonna take a quick break. When we come back, the complications of dating with your claws out.

Cristen: Plus, a popover to lesbian TikTok??

Caroline: Touch it up and stick around!

[Midroll ad 2]

Tembe: Well, I think that the assumption is that like lesbians don't have long nails. There's like an entire meme culture devoted to it like the lesbian starter pack, they're like short nails, nail clippers, nails, nails, nails, like there's a very big fixation on nails and the hands, and I get why.

Caroline: We’re back with nail aficionado and bad bitch Tembe Denton-Hurst.

Tembe: But what is interesting to me, too, is I think I've noticed that like the mainstream lesbian community slash like the white lesbian community is where I see that more so than the black lesbian community where I feel like I've met a lot more femmes who wear nails. And that's like not even a thing like. It's not something that comes up in the same way. But yeah, or like there’s the whole thing that lesbian manicure thing where, you know, you have all your nails done except for two like that. It's like, you know, it's a whole - there's a whole subculture around lesbians and nail length and everything like that.

Cristen: So why - why do you think then that there is that difference, that more like focus on the like lesbian starter pack must include clippers is more of like white lesbian stereotyping.

Tembe: I think that it has a little bit to do with the way that like, well, black women's beauty routines, a lot of them do include nails and like include acrylics. And that's kind of part of our culture. And so I think that because that’s the case and there are a lot of black women who are also lesbians, I think if you're a black lesbian and you like to look a certain way or you like to dress a certain way, then like nails is part of that. And I think that, like the women that you're dating, What like if they're coming from the same culture that you are and they're also black would know it's just like. OK, yes. This is part of our cultural heritage. So, you partake in this beauty routine that's not out of the box for me. Whereas like if you watch like Tik Tok ever like lesbian Tik Tok. Well, one it’s a hot ass mess. But lesbian Tik Tok, all of the memes and things like that kind of have to do with that. They're just like, oh, long nails. How is she doing that with those long nails? You know, like all about that's still kind of the dominant - That's still like a big - any comment section is going gonna be filled with that.

Cristen: Caroline, speaking of ‘how is she doing that with those long nails,’ Tembe also knows firsthand how long, sexy nails can lead to not-so-sexy situations.

Caroline: Yeah, when Tembe got her first set of acrylics in college, she had also just started dating someone new ...

Tembe: So what happened was this. got my nails. I want to say like a week before we started dating and, you know, as all lesbian things do, we moved very, very quickly. And it was just like, OK, I like you. You like me. Oh, my God, we're in love. Like, let's have sex. I was like, okay, great, let's have sex. And so, she was kind of. I knew I had liked girls before her and I had like crushes in high school and like, you know, of course, we all had that dramatic relationship situation. But she was like the first person that I was really, really dealing with intimately, consistently. And so, we were just - I was willing to try anything. And she was like, OK, so do you want to do this? Do you want to like finger me? And I was like, OK, yeah, why not? Sounds like a fun idea. I'm down for anything. I'm 18. The world is my oyster. I'm really confident for no reason. Absolutely no reason. And I'm like me with my pointy-ass nails. It was like, OK, let's try this. And so I'm like I put my fingers up there and I pull them out and you know I'm thinking, everything's going well. And then she's like, oh shit. And I was like, what and she was like I'm bleeding. And I was like, no. I was like, Oh, my God, you're not bleeding. I was so mortified. I think I started crying. I think I really did start crying. I was like, this is the worst day of my life. I was like, this is horrible.

Caroline: What was going on in your head as - as you guys are having this discussion?

Tembe: I was just like, wow, you really fucked up your first girlfriend. Wow. Hmm. Interesting. That was like, really good job, Tembe, your first girlfriend, you decide to, like, cut her now she's gonna hate you and she'll never want to get married and have lesbian babies. This is horrible. And I was so sad. I was just, like, mortified. Like, I just was so overwhelmed because, I in my head, I knew I was inexperienced. And so for me, I was like, this is just a sign of me being inexperienced. That I don't know how to navigate with my nails.

Caroline: Absolutely mortified, Tembe took drastic measures ...

Tembe: And then the next day I ripped my nails off. And I wasn't even gentle about it. I, like, put them in hot water for like 20 minutes and then ended up like pulling them off with a metro card. Freshly applied to my nails. I was like pop them right off. My nails were red and raw for like weeks after that. But yeah, I didn't wear acrylics for like three years after that because of it. So yeah, that's what happened.

Cristen: Caroline, I will never look at a metro card the same way again!

Caroline: Right?? The good news is that Tembe and her college girlfriend are still together… and after a three-year break from her acrylics, Tembe couldn't resist the siren song of a fresh set

Cristen: And with her girlfriend's blessing, Tembe popped to the nail salon and got her glammed-up, bad-bitch statement hands back

Caroline: So when you finally tried acrylics again, were you nervous to try fingering your girlfriend again?

Tembe: Oh I now just don't do it. We just that we just we've just removed it. We were just like we've just cut it out our relationship part we just don't do it anymore. That's just over. We just like we just made the adjustment. It's fine. Like she's just like she doesn't miss it. She's like just like. Not really. That's like not her preference, essentially. She would just. It was something like when we were younger, I think we were really willing to try whatever. And it was just like, okay, let's see how this goes. She was never there was never her preference. So it's like she me wanting to wear nails and not like fingering her. After that, she was like, fine with it. I think we have since I've worn nails, we've tried it maybe like a few times in the past few years and it's been fine. Like, I think I'm much more experienced now

Cristen: Well, is there anything that we didn't touch on about nail art, acrylics, etc. that listeners should know before we wrap up?

Tembe: What should they know about it. I think that, like, honestly, anybody. Everyone should be like. People should try it. I think the nails are great. And I think that they're a really great way to express yourself. And I think they've become their own accessory category at this point. And for black girls, I want them to start wearing stains on their nails and doing whatever they want to do and trying all the crazy stuff and not worrying about it and that being cool to like, you know, I would love for it to be something that feels accessible to everyone and that, you know, it does. It's not attached to respected like expression is not attached to acceptability. And that goes for so many categories where, you know, you have to express yourself a certain way in order to be perceived a certain way. And I think that that goes for the looks and behaviors and things like that. I think that times are changing. But I think that it's not necessarily changing for everyone. And I would love to see that happen. And I think that nails is a really good place in conversation to start.

Cristen: Caroline, I mentioned at the top of the episode that I am sporting my typical 5-year-old's manicure, which means my nails are just dirty and unpolished. But since, you know, we've got a lot of time on our hands now.

Caroline: Oh, time on our hands!

Cristen: Time on our hands to put paint on our hands. No, I'm really excited to try out one tip that Adele passed along that she learned while going to all these incredible Vietnamese nail salons to film her documentary, Nailed it. She says that the key to painting your own nails is always having like a paint brush with some nail polish remover, just like ready to go to clean up any spots. Because that's always that's always my problem. I'm left handed. My right hand looks terrific. My left hand looks like a 5-year-old, you know, but

Caroline: It really fits with your aesthetic, apparently!

Cristen: Is she 5? Is she 35? Who can tell? Maybe. Now, thanks to Adele, I'm going to step up my nail game during these quarantimes.

Caroline: During these quarantimes. Well, yeah, during these quarantimes, y'all let us know what you think. How do you wear YOUR nails? Also, how are you keeping up with your nails in this time of quarantine? Send us your pics or drop us a line! You can email us at hello@unladylike.co, find us on social @unladylikemedia or join our private facebook group and jump into the thread for this episode.

Cristen: Visit unladylike.co to find this episode’s sources and transcript. While you’re there, sign up for our newsletter to get a weekly dose of desperately needed actually good news

Caroline: To watch Adele’s documentary Nailed It, head over to naileditdoc.com. It’s incredible and was our main inspo for this episode! Also, you can find Tembe on Insta at @tembae or follow her work on New York Magazine’s The Strategist.

Cristen: A huge, special thanks to all y’all who’ve signed up to support us on Patreon. If you want ad-free Extra Unladylike episodes, head over to patreon.com/unladylikemedia and subscribe.

Caroline: Nora Ritchie is the producer of Unladylike. Abigail Keel is our senior producer. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford. Executive producers are Chris Bannon, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Cristen: This podcast was created by your hosts, Cristen Conger

Caroline: And Caroline Ervin of Unladylike Media.

Cristen: Next week …

Natalie Wynn: I don't think like humans, we're not we're not really it's kind of unprecedented that you would read two thousand negative things written about yourself in a week. You know, like that's an unusual situation that not a lot of people have been through, I don't think.

Caroline: We’re talking to Natalie Wynn, creator of the wildly popular YouTube channel Contrapoints — all about what it’s like to get canceled.

Cristen: Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike so you don’t miss this episode. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get unladylike.