Manpolish: The love affair between men & nail polish

Summer is almost here and I feel a need to be bold and sassy. Flip flop weather brings out the need to display my summer toes, or in the famous words of my law school colleague and live male alter ego C.S.Gorman “summer hooves.”

I like nail polish. In fact there were years when my nails never saw the light of day without nail polish. The fondness quickly faded once I joined a female collegiate club side rugby team and had to keep my nails extremely short. Coupled with the constant worry of embarrassment of peeling nail polish, I decided that less is more and eventually settled on none at all.

Lately I have seen many males with a penchant for nail polish. The weird thing is, male celebrities wearing nail polish is common place in our society. Many have seen polish on the nails of celebrities such as Seal, Dave Navarro, David Beckham, Johnny Depp and Cash Warren. Nail polish on regular professional non-celebrity males is an anomaly. So, you can imagine my eye brow raise of surprise to see men wearing nail polish. Why is this surprising? Who designated nail polish “for females only?” and more importantly, why is the topic of “manpolish” blog worthy? Well, because the topic interests, intrigues and confuses me at the same time. I live in small town Arkansas and seeing young men wearing nail polish is evidence of the power and pull of fashion, the retail industry, social media and societal trends. There are actually websites like alphanail.com that sell nail polish for men. Don't believe me? You can see for yourself by going to Alpha Nail

After a brief soul searching, I have arrived at the conclusion that we are all slaves to fashion in some way. I like to wear nail polish because I love bright bold colors. I also like nail polish because quite frankly nail polish hides the imperfections on my toes. If wearing nail polish is a male’s way of expressing themselves, then manpolish it is! I have a feeling that this is one fashion trend that might not easily catch on with the males in my household, unless I can find nail polish in camouflage or hunting vest orange!


What are your thoughts on this? 


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2084068/Why-real-men-wear-nail-polish.html 


http://www.divinecaroline.com/22072/39473-men-nail-polish

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/fashion/nail-polish-men-latest-trend-grooming-article-1.971247