Why the fuck can’t men wear pink nail polish?
I have never actually been able to get a good answer to this. The conversation along those lines goes something like “because they’ll get laughed at,” and when I ask why they get laughed at they’ll say “because it looks ridiculous,” and when I ask why it looks ridiculous they say “because men don’t wear nail polish,” and then we’re back to where we began except that my conversational partner thinks I’m a weirdo feminist who probably hates men.
At this point, someone is probably going angrily to the comments section to say that I think all men should wear nail polish and, by God, he has never wanted to wear nail polish and I’m not going to shame his masculinity. That is not what I’m intending to say at all. Men should feel free to wear nail polish, or not, the same way that most women feel free to wear nail polish, or not.
And even if it turns out that most men don’t want to wear nail polish, so what? Nail polish is a simple pleasure. It harms no one to spend a meditative fifteen minutes coloring your nails and toes a light blue, or to feel a burst of joy when you catch a glimpse of your nails in the light. What possible gain is there from keeping the men, however small a group they are, who like having their nails colored from doing so?
Adornment is a human universal. Even societies that don’t wear clothing tattoo their skin, pierce their ears, style their hair or wear jewelry. Small snail shell beads are among the earliest items in the archaeological record. There are even reports of some wild apes, especially orangutans, draping themselves with various objects such as vegetation or even whole dead animals.
Human beings, it seems, like pretty things.
And yet, in our culture, men are not supposed to adorn themselves. Men do not wear jewelry, makeup, brightly patterned clothing or about half the color wheel. Hell, men aren’t even supposed to be spending a lot of effort on picking out clothing. Blue jeans and boring T-shirts, that’s the manly thing to do. Rich men can wear nice watches and expensive suits, because even if that’s paying attention to clothing it also shows off how successful you are. A few alternative subcultures coughhipsterscough practice male adornment, but they’re always viewed kind of suspiciously. They’re “gay.” They’re “not real men.” Whatever.
Social pressures have a lot of power: just ask your friendly neighborhood cigarette smoker. In particular, the fear of being laughed at, excluded from the group, is one of the most potent fears a human being can experience. Strong enough to teach men that they can’t like pretty things, because if they do it’s silly and ridiculous and girly?
Almost certainly.
I’m no fashionista myself: blue jeans and a boring T-shirt are basically what I wear every day too. But sometimes it’s fun to get dressed up. And there is not so much fun in the world, so much joy, that we can deny half of humanity it willy-nilly, for no reason that (to me) anyone has been capable of naming.
Thing of Things 
THIS! ALL OF THIS! ADORNMENT AS HUMAN UNIVERSAL!
(I should maybe mention that I’m in the process of trying to found a line of gender-neutral cosmetics. Ahem, ahem. #shamelessselfpromotion)
Also, this is just one straight lady’s opinion, but while men should never feel PRESSURED to wear nail polish, *I personally* think men with polished nails are hot as fuck.
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This is 2015. Not 1915. In fact, if it were 1915, in about 7 years women will start wearing, gasp, trousers! Really! It’s going to happen! I’m from the future and y’all just aren’t going to believe the changes!!!! In fact, letting you all in on a little secret, they’re going to get jobs too in about 20 years! Yep. You heard me right. Jobs! They will have their OWN source of income and even more interesting is that they’ll demand their husbands “help out” with the housework!!! that whole idea of thats what makes men and women different, the way it says in the bible it’s the natural and normal and right way will not be so much, at least in this area. But everybody knows that that’s it. No more. Maybe we were a bit too rigid, but NOW we know the “bottom line” as they’ll say in the future.
But going ahead back to 2015, i notice in the room i’m in, lots of women. My gosh, most of them are wearing pants! Holy Hannah! Just 2 minutes ago i was in 1915 and no respectable woman EVER wore trousers. Who was brave enough to do THAT??? But i look around and everyone seems to be fine with it, they all seem comfortable and just, well, normal and well-adjusted. This really rocks me because back in 15, 19 not 2000, there was this whole brouhaha going on about this thing called women’s rights. Yep you heard correctly- “women’s rights!” what a concept and the arguments??? My word!
But somewhere along that line, somebody, don’t know who, but it was probably the guy or girl who must be the one person everybody says “they” said it was ok or not, said this was really ok! So everybody agreed because “they” said so and it was ok, that i find myself in a room with lots of wonderful ladies and they’re all wearing pants! Can you just believe it???
So as i sit here contemplating all this, the changes i’ve seen in just this short time from 1915 to 2015, is there more coming? Do you think that men and women are more alike as humans than we’ve been told? Other than just a few obvious things, i talk to my wife as i would my best guy friend leaving out of course, y’know, THAT stuff. That stuff that makes all us guys, i assume you gals have the same kinda thing going on, all us guys feel like we’re all the same tuff guys who know what the gig is, right bro? Bro? You hearing me?? What’s that? You’re heart’s broken over a chiCk?? Dude. Man up! Let’s just go get a brewski. It’ll chill in a bit. You’ll be back good as new in a bit. Hell, new girl just waiting for you probably at the bar!
Western culture men do adorn but their choices are limited in scope as well as color and this to me is what the article is about. Along with the idea that anything feminine for a guy is just wrong because feminine is just not as well thought of as the masculine side of things. Which is clearly wrong but the way it is nonetheles
Nail color is just a spot of color on an otherwise drab bit of body canvas. Nothing more nothing less. Easily removed unlike tattoos. Applied in about 30 minutes tops of focused mindfulness as a break from more serious stuff going on. And there’s alot of seriously serious stuff happening out there. Homelessness, terrorism, starvation and joblessness. To get a bit of happiness by having a bit of color seems to me to be a wonderful respite from it all.
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*I personally* think using foreign words are NOT at all the right way to go. Nicer words should be used than F-bombing.
By the way, fashionness (whether girls or boys) is mostly to do with clothing and jewellery only. Anything that is NOT at all clothing neither jewellery such as ‘Painted Nails’, it should have nothing to do with your gender but instead with your style!!!
In my heart, I believe God would say, if I as a guy can dress in style with painted nails blending in with my masculine clothes, that will still make me straight in front of all those who want to think I’m joining the LGBT people. (No matter what society thinks and says when I don’t follow 1 thing most guys live by (through tradition, culture, fashion (etc…), doesn’t mean their opinions are true (a real fact) unless they are any of the positives).
*I personally think* all colours (including pink and blue) should never be called ‘womanly or manly’. Instead let anything no matter the colour be a boy’s or girl’s except for certain stuff.
If there was a poll for this article, I would Strongly Oppose to Painted Nails being Feminine. I vote it to be gender-neutral instead!!! (It should be a human tradition throughout the world rather than a female culture. It should be everybody’s personal choice to have painted nails on themselves or not and guys as much as girls should have their own right to choose what colour they want to have – (especially if it’s pink or blue).
Now, if any of you think and say anything negative about me when I as a guy have painted fingernails of my own while I’m out in public, I will speak out in defence and have you face consequences! I will speak out the similar negative answer to be thrown back at you (whether girl or boy) which any of you may not like. So Be Careful…
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Smartass answer: because they’re not fronting a punk band.
But I think punk only gets away with it, on one level, because it’s the most explicitly radical music there is and therefore anything overtly gender-nonconforming is going to be taken as a political statement as much as an artifact of gender expression; and on another level because its fashion is extremely butch in most other ways and so it leaves latitude.
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I was thinking myself as I read the original post men who don’t trigger me a social pattern of being less manly, or girly, for wearing nail polish are punk, or similarly radical or counternormative subcultures. “Sticking it to the man” itself seems somewhat manly, and wearing nail polish as a way to show “the man”, or establishment, their standardized notion is illegitimate seems manly as an extension. Rather, it doesn’t seem to me that punks wearing nail polish itself doesn’t count as unmanly, but it’s one aspect of fashion ensemble that as a whole is not unmanly.
Hipsters don’t strike me as definitely not manly. Their features strike me as just not indicating they’re *definitely* manly people. Apparently, there is a new trend of ‘lumbersexual’:
http://elitedaily.com/envision/hipster-men-are-lumbersexuals-photos/849694/
‘Lumbersexuality’ is apparenlty an offshoot of ‘metrosexuality’, a way for metrosexual men and male hipsters to reclaim traditional masculinity as it declines in the west. The goal is to look like a lumberjack, but a grizzled version. LIke a macho Abercrombie & Fitch model left out in the sun too long. I live in Vancouver, where men in flannel shirts and unkempt beards drinking craft beers are ubiquitous. I can’t tell if they’re actually “reformed” metrosexuals, or whatever, or just guys who dress like lumberjacks unironically. I believe a few Internet articels decided to lumbersexuality was a trend among confused young men, and made a big deal out of it, thereby perpetuating its existence.
I’ve only ever perceived hipsters as trying to defy the mold of ‘normal’, without having themes like more organized subcultures. Whatever weirdness they may display doesn’t strike me as having a gendered aspect.
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Epistemic status: even I don’t know if I’m serious.
If a significant percentage of men defects from current equilibrium, there will be a societal pressure on other men (e.g. me) to apply makeup. Which means I’ll have to waste extra sleep minutes in the morning.
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Defend our Schelling point! I’m with You bro 🙂
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among my ancestral people, the White Professionals, it goes a lot deeper than just wearing suits to show off how you’re successful. Class distinctions go from clothes to table manners to speech. And there are ways of coming off as fashionable and well-dressed in all circumstances, not just where you’d wear a suit. Some of us read men’s fashion magazines, and some of us have pretty detailed personal styles.
(I never really participated in this, I’ve always just dressed like a nerd)
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There are a ton of subcultures that love adorning themselves, male and female, we just think their adornments are really ugly—getting dressed up in team gear to go to a baseball or basketball game or filling your closet with Ed Hardy shirts, etc. The squarest, most uncontacted-by-alternative-culture guys I know like to express themselves with the way they dress, but it’s probably going to involve brands or silly crossover t-shirts, etc. (Or a nice tie, if they’re in a more formal environment.)
I think guys should paint their nails if they want, but I think you have to ignore a lot of the adorning that’s already going on to believe there’s a large group of men who have a huge, currently unmet, socially obstructed need for it. I guess what I disagree with is your definition of adornment, which seems overly narrow (and stereotypically feminine) in a way that ends up begging the question.
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Isn’t the fact that it’s “stereotypically feminine” kinda the point, though?
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Sure, but my reading of this post was “men are insufficiently adorned, full stop,” not “men are insufficiently adorned in stereotypically feminine ways.”
Specifically this part: “And yet, in our culture, men are not supposed to adorn themselves.” (I think it’s clear that Ozy means to include stereotypically masculine adornments in this argument by their referencing watches and suits etc.) I think that Ozy’s eliding all kinds of ways that men of all classes and cultures adorn themselves in the service of a much narrower point that seems straightforward enough, which is that men in some cultures feel uncomfortable adorning themselves in some ways.
I agree that if men want to paint their nails they should feel welcome to do it, and I understand completely if the adornments most men in the broader culture flock to leave you cold, although my Michael Jordan watch felt like the height of fashion when I was nine. I only contest the strange idea that nail polish is riding to the rescue of a heretofore unadorned gender.
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Yeah, even in mainstream culture, masculine adornment is a thing. When I grew up, I completely swallowed the idea that men aren’t supposed to adorn themselves. Then it turns out that we are, with suits and ties and stuff. I hated it. Male socialization is full of lies!
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I did a social science experiment a few months back by wearing nail polish for a week (applied by a female friend). I got very little negative reaction and a lot of positive reaction from women (I don’t mean they hit on me, I mean they thought it was cool). My findings might be skewed by the fact that i have a pretty good scowl and people don’t tend to get in my face very often anyway.
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In my experience, whether it’s nail polish or being a nurse or anything else, women often like men who are stereotypically (I will not type “stereotypically” again; it is implied) feminine and this doesn’t constitute an impediment to sexual attraction either.
Instead, it is other men who shame feminine men into being more stereotypically masculine. And it is other men who praise and celebrate conventional masculinity. Women don’t really care that much.
This is something I have always wanted to tell Roissy and the “alpha male” crowd. Conventional masculinity required to attract women? Not at all! How many women fall in unrequited love for feminine gay men?
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While I see and agree with your overall point, I think you sell short the extent and breadth of current male adornment. Consider the blindingly colorful Hawaiian shirt, the increasing popularity of tattoos and piercings, hip hop chains and grills, the cowboy belt buckle, etc. You’re clearly right on the general point, but as Jeff Goldblum pointed out in his unique diction, “Life, uh, uh, uh, uh, finds a way.”
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I’m a guy who often wears nail polish, and although I do occasionally get laughed at for this, it gets positive reactions much more frequently. I used to be pretty self-conscious about this sort of thing, but my experience has been that strangers aren’t scrutinizing people for gender nonconformity nearly as much as I’d feared. This may not generalize too broadly, given that I’m in a pretty liberal city and mostly move in geek subcultures (although a lot of the compliments come from random people in coffeeshops or on the metro, not just board gamers and such).
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The only time I’ve ever worn nail polish, a woman I work with gathered my coworkers into a semicircle, with me in the middle, and asked my coworkers to explain to me why I wasn’t supposed to wear nail polish. I was anticipating some negative reaction, and was prepared to ignore their disapproval, but every single one of them just looked at her and said, “Who cares if he wears nail polish?”
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That wasn’t about nail polish. That was about your co-worker making an overreaching status grab.
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Here’s one that I’ve noticed in my friend circle and walking around town in Portland (and at Portland State, since I first noticed this when I was a student):
Among women who wear long hair, ponytails come at many heights. Back of neck, back of head, top of head, whatevah. But among men – me included – who wear long hair, it’s incredibly rare to see anything but a low, back of neck ponytail. There are exceptions, of course.
What I find interesting is that when I asked long-haired men about it, none of them had given the choice they made to always wear a low ponytail any conscious thought. Some of them hadn’t (consciously) noticed this gender-distinction at all, until I pointed it out.
It just illustrated for me anew how we can absorb and follow gender rules without even consciously noticing them.
(Not even mentioning all the non-ponytail ways of keeping hair out of face that most long-haired men never use.)
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I see that all the time. As a long haired man, I just don’t get it. I mostly wear headbands, as they are more comfortable, but when I do wear a ponytail, I wear it high. A higher ponytail keeps the hair off the neck,
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When I had long hair, I found the back-of-head ponytail more comfortable, but I more often wore it low so as to not appear as feminine.
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A high ponytail is vastly better in a warm climate.
With regard to non-ponytail methods… it can sometimes even go as far as doing your ponytail wrong. I used to wear my ponytail with a scrunchie, because they’re more comfortable and less likely to get tangled in my hair. Apparently this was Wrong and Bad.
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Yeah, scrunchies are considered “feminine”… I don’t think even patterns like tartan or skulls could outweigh that. Luckily, they’re not the only good hair holders.
These are the best (unisex, don’t clash with any clothing, don’t get tangled or damage hair):
These are also pretty good, but less durable:
Bonus: cool or weird?
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Different strokes… the ones at the top have that little hard plastic nub at the join which makes badfeel, and always seems to pull apart so there’s a section with no elastic inside.
I use a couple of cards of the second – lose them often enough that longevity isn’t an issue. Joys of motorcycle helmets.
Imma go with weird.
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Nita, I’ll see you those and raise you this: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/a9/3a/6e/a93a6e444456b79b08f23e0eaf1df76e.jpg
Pity the species is actually pretty fragile and *really* bitey…
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A girl I dated in college kept a little green snake as a pet that liked to drape itself across my sunglasses frames. It would have made an adorable ponytail holder, but it wasn’t housetrained very well or at all, and I imagine snake droppings would be inconvenient to clean out of my hair.
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@Nita: When I had long hair, the frotte ones were much *more* durable for me than the plain thin ones, those were snapping like every other week or so. The frotte ones, never snapped, they only eventually got stretched too much.
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In my city there is a high pony tail/bun revolution (see the tumblr fuckyeahmenwithbuns for reference). It is such a small thing, needing so little effort, but it still has the power to communicate ” I acctually did put effort in thinking about my look”, which makes me swoon. At some point it will get mainstream enough to loose usefulness as a sign (as long hair for guys itself did), but now we are in the sweet spot where it still works, but is also widespread enough that I can enjoy it often. Yay
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Hair in the top of the head is usually the first to go, so it makes sense for men to wear low ponytails in general. After that, it’s just a matter of fashion.
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It makes sense for older men to wear low tails with that justification, but most men who wear long hair start when they’re younger and don’t have to worry about pattern baldness…
I’d guess it’s just because low tails are also low maintenance.
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I’ve been told that in certain neighborhoods a top knot or ponytail high up on the back of your head will be taken as a sign that you’re a Norteno, whereas a top knot or ponytail farther down means you’re a Sureno.
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Is purple nail polish a feminist issue? I’m not a fan of pink, but I do love me some dark purple. Can I avoid controversy with purple?
I don’t think that’s actually true. Men do adorn themselves. Not all of them; probably less than women do. But men do buy clothes to match their own personal preference; to be attractive; they cut and shape their hair. I’m pretty anti-adornment, mostly cause I’m fairly happy with my default look in jeans and a t-shirt and can’t be bothered to do more, but even I do small things here and there.
Men’s adornment might not be as common, or as elaborate, but it is their. I think it’s less about letting men adorn themselves, and more about letting men do so in a greater variety of ways. Also, about letting men adorn themselves purely for the sake of adornment (while we’re at it, we can get rid of the notion that making oneself aesthetically pleasing is a shallow and vapid act; sometimes people just want to be pretty, and it’s no more wasteful or stupid than most any other useless happy making timesink you might imagine).
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My husband has one nail painted purple right now. 😄 He had me paint his nail (or I guess it was my idea)for the first time a few weeks ago- red (or scarlet) for the Buckeyes after the National Championship. And he apparently liked it because after the red chipped off, he asked me to paint it purple.
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Actually, I think sports culture, despite it’s stereotypical masculinity, is the only area where I’ve seen men wear nail polish semi-regularly. At one of the local highschools, some of the teams there would paint their toenails to match their team colours.
Its too much work for me to paint them on a regular basis. I need multiple coats and a protective layer because I’m rough on my hands, and even then they chip and break often. I also have a habit of biting my nails, to make matters worse. Otherwise I’d be wearing purple nails until I got sick of it.
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Paint your toenails instead! It stays much longer than on the fingernails.
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That is a possibility I have not considered much, thank you.
My only reservation is that they will be hidden, so no one will see them.
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In several cultures, adornment of fingernails – including painting them or growing them long – used to be status markers – rich folk didn’t have to work with their hands, so could have long, painted fingernails w/out breaking or chipping them.
In our culture, men were the gender that did rough work with their hands.
That’s no longer so much the case, but cultural memes are sticky, so…
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“In our culture, men were the gender that did rough work with their hands.”
Um, what about the majority of women who worked in factories, in farming, as servants, etc.? No, “rough work with hands” doesn`t explain this current distinction.
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The fault is mine for being unclear, but I meant “our culture” to unpack into “our recent culture” – the fact that women were employed in factories during WW2, and this kicked-off second-wave feminsm, implies they weren’t working their to being with. I don’t really consider household service to be “rough work” – for men or women. My understanding is positions in service were sought after for this reason.
Also something I left out: when you think “long-finger nails”, you think middle-class women, not working-class women, so that’s an issue also.
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Excuse me, “to begin with”
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“Um, what about the majority of women who worked in factories, in farming, as servants, etc.? ”
they certainly didn’t wear nail polish, any more than many other women even now.
And there are lines of work where nail polish is considered inappropriate or else is restricted: http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/powerpoint/Uniforms_Presentations/wear-and-appearance-of-th-3.shtml
(towards the bottom)
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@ roe
It sounds a bit like your model of society consists of working-class men and middle-to-upper-class women.
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Nita: I respectfully deny the charge – in the mid-20th century west (what I take to be the point-of-origin for what we’re discussing) middle-class men could be doing factory work, would be expected to do repair work at home, &etc.
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i think that there was a period when even poorer women were supposed to pretend to be refined enough to not have to work, because femininity was defined so that only the upper classes could attain the ideal… this is no universal law, but I think this was a Thing.
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roe: “..the fact that women were employed in factories during WW2, and this kicked-off second-wave feminsm, implies they weren’t working their to being with.”
It could imply this, if it weren’t a well-known fact, that poor women (and young children as well) worked in factories (and for a while even in mines) since the beginning of the 19th C. However, I agree that the 19th C. could be disregarded, if we talk about current cultural norms about nail polish.
roe: “..I don’t really consider household service to be “rough work”..”
Ok, it’s not a rough work in the same sense as woodwork or construction, but household service (constant cleaning and washing) just makes polishing your nails pointless. Even contemporary nail polishes wears off after a all day long washing. 🙂
But what is still relevant, women working in household services and in factories didn’t vanish after WW2. I agree with Nita on that “It sounds a bit like your model of society consists of working-class men and middle-to-upper-class women.”
My opinion on why polished nails are currently considered to be a feminine trait is that it’s just one of the many strange and unreasonable gendered cultural norms that we hold. However, despite my rejection of your explanation, I can’t really provide my own. My guess is that it might be connected with overall decrease in culturally accepted masculine decoration after WW2, if compared with 19th C. styles. (Of course, we are talking about middle and upper-class people here, not working-class).
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I don’t think the desire for adornment is all that universal. David Mitchell makes the argument better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66c7el1E11o.
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That was funny, but…
1. Ozy clearly says the desire can be seen in all cultures, not in all individuals. And is it ethical for individuals who don’t enjoy adornment to impose their will on those who do?
2. Mitchell argues in favour of easy, standard, don’t-make-me-think adornment, not against adornment. His complaint is that the creative self-expression of other men might make his own adornment strategy less effective.
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I think the suit represents a sort of mutual disarmament pact among men. Any man could gain an advantage over other men by dressing distinctively, but if everyone does this, the effort is spent but no gain is made. The norms against adornment are there to prevent defection.
I will tentatively endorse the above argument in the descriptive sense, but I’m not confident in it in the prescriptive sense.
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Suits are distinctive, at least in the sense that if you’re in a context where you’re expected to wear a suit, you can use it to express just about anything that you could with a broader spectrum of clothing. They just have their own coding that’s largely separate from anything else in the menswear space.
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My nail art gallery – quite a lot of pink in there: https://plus.google.com/photos/109611560228842023579/albums/6115227585640927585
I’m aware that wearing nail polish is a thing that some people see as eccentric, but I’m mostly okay with that. I do tend to wait for a couple of weeks to get a feel for the environment before I start wearing it to work for each new contract, and that makes me a little sad about the world, but I can generally get away with it.
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Also, “It harms no one to …feel a burst of joy when you catch a glimpse of your nails in the light.”
This. This is a thing which I sometimes have difficulty expressing, but having a little piece of something beautiful quite literally at your fingertips is a wonderfully hedonistic thing to do, and gives me an astonishing amount of pleasure.
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There was a post on [make-up? men wearing make-up? i’m unsure] where a commenter suggested it might be GOOD that men are pressured into not wearing make-up or engaging in other aspects of presentation considered feminine, because acceptance of this opens up a new, costly field of status signalling.
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And now I see that Zakharov and NIta touch upon this immediately above my reply. That will teach me to post before reading all the comments!
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“And yet, in our culture, men are not supposed to adorn themselves. ”
This has as much or more to do with class as with gender, except to the extent that class culture delineates gender norms.
Go back and look at the opening scene in Dangerous Liaisons, which goes back and forth between John Malkovich and Glenn Close spending the better part of the morning, as they do every day, getting dressed and powdered and made up to be seen in society. But that was aristocratic culture, and that culture has been reviled for the last two centuries by the bourgeoisie where it isn’t co-opted by the bourgeoisie – see the comment above about table manners – and men dressing like peacocks was a piece of it that was thrown out. The only vestige of it is formal military uniforms
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people ignore ordinary things and pay attention to exceptions
if you want to focus people’s attention on yourself then having an exceptional appearance is a good idea. otherwise it is just going to inconvenience you
you can see the same pattern with e.g. wearing inside-out clothing despite there being no clearly gendered aspect
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I think a lot of people have an implicit belief that goes “You have a moral obligation to behave like a stereotypical member of the salient demographic groups that you belong to.” These people get upset when other people don’t conform.
Seeing someone imply this particular belief is one of my Berserk Buttons. I get furious at anyone who implicitly suggests or espouses it.
Fortunately I think most people realize how horrible and conformist this belief sounds when it is implicitly articulated. The people I’ve challenged on it tend to back down, or come up with some rationalization that they are in fact motivated by some other belief.
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Hmm, I think it must look different from their point of view. Something like “every person has a role in society assigned by God/fate, and they should strive to perform their role well and not transgress its boundaries”.
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How bad of a person am I if, after reading that whole post and all of the comments, I still think nail polish looks weird on guys?
Like, I’m not going to yell at you or anything, but I’m not going to stop thinking it looks weird either.
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Hi. I have then to ask you some questions. What do you mean with weird? Just something you are not accostumed with or you conflate some moral charge to one not fulfilling that expectation? In this last case you sort of deactivate the critical thinking that further elaborate the distinction between unexpected and dangerous, suggesting a not full consciousness of the scale of priority that conforming to this behaviour takes, compared to stopping at red lights, or say, covering the face, wearing a mask, etc. which have a stronger rationale to be found unsettling.
Why you are probably not as much weirded out by a woman with short hair? Because you probably learned to be accostumed to it, that it’s acceptable.
Why suggest you won’t stop thinking that, as you probably started thinking that for a reason. The way you double down on it, suggests a moral obligation for which it sort of shouldn’t be done or is “quite not right” to not conform to such rules.
Any of this is speculation, I stress, not conclusive thoughts from the little arguments you posed.
I might suggest a possible assciation of it to sexual “deviancy” of some kind that might unsettle you, or to the idea it’s a fetish, which in a slippery slope pattern might come with many uncomfortable fetishes. You can find it weird if you want but people should understand it’s their problem and should not be important.
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Because of the large stigma, any man wearing nail polish is almost certainly going to have very low conformism, which will then usually correlate with outlier behavior (‘deviancy’).
This is actually an interesting issue in general, where stigmatizing things is self-reinforcing, because the stigma caused conformist people to either stop doing the stigmatizing thing or to do it in secret. So the people (visibly) doing the stigmatized thing will then be far more deviant than if there’d not be a stigma, resulting in people who like conformism (‘humans’) to believe the stigma is justified to suppress those deviant people.
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Two things:
Firstly, you misunderstood what people were saying.
Men don’t wear nail polish because men don’t wear nail polish, and thus wearing nail polish while male signals gender nonconformity. It’s an arbitrary distinction, more or less, and I think most people would acknowledge that.
(Similarly, dressing in black ripped clothing and wearing lots of mascara signals teenage angst, but there’s nothing inherently angsty about it; it’s a signal.)
But some people believe that gender nonconformity is Bad, basically because it crosses some sort of Schelling Fence and is a weapon of the Blue Tribe. So they’re going to shame and attack you for it.
Secondly … yeah, personally, I’m a lazy bastard and I don’t think “most women feel free to wear nail polish, or not”; there does seem to be some social pressure involved. Same with makeup. Same with earrings. I don’t think any less of people of either gender for doing it, but I’m glad that I never experience the slightest downside for not doing it, and I think that if it became more popular it would hurt me and people like me.
Is that fair? I’m not sure, I know there’s a certain amount of typical-minding on both sides, and cultural expectations shaping our preferences, and a few other things. But still. I’m instinctively opposed to anything that might force me or people like me to behave like that (and, in fact, I’m vaguely opposed to the culture of women wearing makeup all the time for the same reason.)
… although, honestly, nail polish has always struck me as silly and I do think slightly less of people of either gender who wear it regularly, especially if they go to a lot of trouble to do so. I’m not going to yell at them or try to shame them; I just alieve that it indicates they probably have different preferences/personality to me if they’re willing to spend ages on that kind of adornment. So there’s that.
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>>> I just alieve that it indicates they probably have different preferences/personality to me if they’re willing to spend ages on that kind of adornment. So there’s that.
Most everyone I know who uses nail polish puts it on while watching television or webvideos. It’s not like they’re specifically devoting that time to adornment and nothing else. Rather, their hands are free while they’re doing something pretty much everyone loves, and they’re taking the opportunity that offers them to pretty up.
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This seems to rest on a false premise, or an unlikely high number of conversation partners who didn’t have the brains to simply answer “of course men can wear pink nail polish!”. Except if the reason they can’t do it is that they might not want to do it badly enough to ignore the prospect of someonecfinding it objectionable for some silly reason, which pretty much means that no one can do anything.
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BTW. I’d teally like an answer as i’ve asked many times and get the same circular answer as Ozy led with, basically no answer at all except because. But if the women could answer maybe it would help. Why is nail polish so enyrenched in for women only thst there mere mention of it rrsults in a pinched face and a “yew, i don’t like it, not manly, i don’t want my man worried about chipping his nails etc” that makes no sense to me. Is nail color a feminine rallying issue? Is it a politic of “it’s mine and you can’t have it and i’ll do everything i can to make sure you don’t” kind of thing? Yet women borrowed throughout history from men’s fashion, and yrs specifically to this point, nail color was originally for men.
Why is yhis one thing so vehemently defended by women, probably even more than skirts I am betting since the fashion designers are always showing skirts for men on the runways. I hope i get an answer as it’s really bugging me.
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Women have been changing since the Victorian Era to become more like men in order to achieve equality. We have moved everything from our fashion to our work choices, parenting and ethics to fit into and have ‘equality’ in a male driven, patriarchal society. On the whole, men don’t feel the need to be ‘like’ women, or to have what they have. There is no drive for them to take on female traits, fashions or behaviour as there is no perceived benefit or reward… society has made it something to ridicule if they have, which actually just makes it a further insult to women. With the exception of getting paternity pay and to a certain extent, stay at home dads…
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