fingernail painting
when I was a child, I thought that fingernail painting meant a choice like "rose? red? or ruby?" heck, if I had listened to my mother and her.... (how odd to remember suddenly that when I was a child, my mother had no friends. or rather she had one, who lived in Galveston, which wasn't even in Brasil!) acquaintances then, or colleagues maybe, the American women she spoke to in northeastern Brasil. (crimeny! what a lonely life she had!) for them, the choice was among the clear fingernail paints. I remember being struck by what an odd concept that was, clear paint. (and that it was even odder to live in a world in which it was sinful not to paint your nails, but it was also sinful to paint them any color but clear.) there were no little girls I knew except my sister, but I knew other little girls existed. I had seen them in church, and at the open air market I thought was downtown. they wore painted fingernails, mostly shades of red. (at some time I must've recognized that not only was my father crazy, but all the American men around him were as crazy as he was! did that mean I had to grow up and become a crazy man? maybe not! maybe I could stay in Brasil and grow up to be a Brasilian man. they didn't seem to be as crazy.) but anyway, fingernail painting! the National Geographic must've done an article about it, because I became aware that most women anywhere in the world painted their nails! and almost none of them painted their nails clear. and women had been painting their nails as far back as in Egypt! (as far as I knew when I was a child, Egypt had existed thousands of years before and then gone away. I was vaguely aware of Africa, but I don't think it ever occurred to me that history had happened in Africa too.) much later, much much later, when I was no longer a child, and was trying really hard to become a man (after all, I was married, had a child, and owed a ton of money for a house and a car), I became vaguely aware of a group called hippies, and knew maybe a dozen young women who sorta wanted to be hippies, but liked living in houses and driving places in cars. one or maybe two of those young women made me aware that women painted their toenails too! (imagine me doing a backwards somersault in my chair.) but even more amazing, they painted their fingernails in more than one color! and there were no rules! a girl could paint her fingernails - and her toenails! - each a different color. or she could paint each of her fingernails in more than one color! much much much later, long after the hippies had joined Egypt (they no longer existed), another young woman showed me that women could not only paint their fingernails in more than one color, but could add painting a daisy, or a Scottie dog's head, or a yin-yang symbol. (imagine a double backwards somersault and a cartwheel in that same chair.) not only were there no rules, but a woman could paint anything she had the imagination, patience, and skill to paint on her nails. if I remember correctly, she had painted about a third of a face onto half of one of her nails, so she could paint a Dali mustache on that face. (triple backwards somersault, but I didn't stick the landing) now she told me, and I don't know how to verify or unverify what she said, that painting one's nails like that goes back to early China, and that they may have learned it from aristocratic women in Africa back before Europeans even knew there was an Africa! I don't really know its history, but surely you can see that I do appreciate fingernail painting.
No comments:
Post a Comment