Fingernails aren't something most guys pay much attention to, other than keeping them cut back so they don't get in our way. Women, women of all sizes, shapes and colors have long paid more attention to their fingernails than dudes do, and that's fine; it's just another on the list of differences between men and women, and for the most part, all I have to say about that is vive la difference!
My wife, now, she doesn't pay much attention to her fingernails except to keep them trimmed. In our rural Alaska homestead, long nails would just get in the way while she's weeding or picking raspberries, and the local wildlife isn't much impressed by fancy fingernails, so she doesn't bother. But now I find that I am going to have to inform her that, according to a recent BBC story, her natural nails are quite possibly racists and classist.
In recent months, Paloma Buddemeier has watched a stream of people walk into her nail salon with the goal of looking as if they'd never been there at all.
"It's crazy," the owner of Wumman Spa in London says.
These customers still get their nails filed, buffed, and trimmed. "You still do the cuticle, you do the soaking and hydrate everything," says Buddemeier, "but you just put no polish on."
Driving this, she says, is a viral craze for bare-looking nails.
OK, if the BBC had just stopped there, we could have filed this under "Who cares?" and gone about our day. But these days, some people have to drag race and class into every single aspect of our everyday existence. It's bad enough when it's just random croakers on the internet. But when it's a state-sponsored media outlet that was once respected as an institution presenting hard news? They should have known better.
The BBC didn't stop there. Here's where this whole thing went off the rails:
In recent months, artsy shots of glossy naked nails have been flooding social media and taking over fashion runways and red carpets, which some are viewing as the latest symbol of "quiet luxury".
But critics argue the bare nails trend actually says something about class, the hamster wheel of beauty standards, and who gets to define what is considered tasteful.
Here's a thought: Let people decide for themselves what's tasteful, and everyone else can just shut the freak up about it. How about that? Fingernails say nothing about class. People decide for themselves what's tasteful and what isn't. Now, I've seen some fingernails that were truly bizarre, but you know what? I don't care. I don't judge people by their fingernails. I may find them crass or ugly, but they aren't my fingernails.
The BBC continues its descent into the absurd:
Nail art's historical and creative roots are linked back to black, Latino, and Asian communities and the suggestion that bare nails are now a sign of high status could stigmatise bold manicures, they say.
"That trend really promotes blankness and this kind of sameness and erasure of culture and identity that is so important to black and brown communities," beauty journalist Kristina Rodulfo tells the BBC.
"They are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty."
What an enormous, odoriferous, steaming pile of utter codswallop. What utter horse squeeze. This is just the kind of stuff I shoveled out of stalls when I was a kid working summers in my uncle's livestock auction barn.
First of all, these things are highly subjective. Fancy fingernails or plain fingernails say nothing at all about anyone other than that they like fancy fingernails or plain fingernails, for whatever reason. That's it. That's all. But there are always, it seems, people who have to drag race or class into everything, instead of doing the polite thing and minding their own business. And aren't the Brits supposedly known for their manners?
A GBNews piece had some reactions, and they are about what a sane person would expect.
Prominent voices, including former Olympic swimmer Baroness Sharron Davies, choreographer Rosie Kay, and opera historian Alexandra Wilson, condemned the BBC for what they saw as an attempt to politicise personal beauty choices.
Baroness Davies said: "This piece of divisive tosh is sadly very reflective of today's BBC."
Choreographer Ms Kay added: "This is beyond utterly insane. Ffs just stop. Stop right now. You're a disgrace."
Opera historian Ms Wilson said: "The politicisation of absolutely everything is becoming deeply tedious. We used to be a sane country."
I have to admit I admire the term "divisive tosh," and am going to start using it in conversation.
Second of all, these prominent voices are correct. If everything is racist, nothing is racist. If everything is classist, whatever that is, then nothing is classist. If everything is offensive, then nothing is offensive.
Seriously, these people need to learn to take an even strain, and mind their own business. I mean, fingernails? Really? I'll be shaking my head over this for the rest of the day.
Even so, this is yet another sign of the decay of the legacy media. With this "divisive tosh," the BBC has gone off the woke map. They have sailed to the edge, into HERE BE MONSTERS territory, and gone over the side. At this point, the proper thing for us to do is wave as they go over. There are better places now where one can find quality reporting; you're looking at one of them, right now.
