The Emotional Side of Something as Simple as Nails

It started with something simple, but annoying enough that I couldn’t ignore it.

When the black polish on my left thumbnail began lifting in a single, flapping piece one Sunday evening a couple of weeks ago, it felt like the end of the world. My immediate instinct was to fix it. At first, I reached for a bottle of clear base coat and carefully applied a small amount underneath the lifted section, pressing it back down. It seemed to work, briefly, but before long it started lifting again.

In desperation, I removed the intact piece altogether and repainted the thumbnail with black polish, finishing it with a glossy top coat. It worked, but I hadn’t smoothed the BIAB layer beforehand, so once it dried the texture showed through the gloss. The result wasn’t particularly pleasing to look at.

To remedy this, I added another layer of clear gloss and then reattached the piece I had previously removed. This seemed to do the trick, and everything was sorted, for the time being. Maybe this would get me through until I was due to have them redone.

But the thumbnail kept niggling away at me all through work the following day. Not in a loud way, just a constant awareness of something slightly wrong. It wasn’t that anyone else would notice. It was that I did.

And once something like that has been noticed, it doesn’t really go away.

After work the following day, I headed to a nail salon in the town centre near my workplace. I couldn’t go to my usual salon as I hadn’t made an appointment.

I’d been curious about this other salon for a while. The place I normally go does a good job, and I’ve never had real complaints, but the finish was never quite as smooth as I wanted. There was always a faint unevenness beneath the gloss, something that only showed itself when the light hit in a certain way.

Most people would never have seen it.

I always did.

I wanted to know whether this salon would be different. Whether they might achieve the kind of finish I’d been quietly chasing for longer than I liked to admit.

I arrived just before 5 p.m. I knew they closed at 6, having checked earlier in the day, but I wasn’t sure whether they’d still fit me in. I explained what I wanted, and the lady asked me to take a seat.

The salon was quiet. Usually it’s full, but at that point it was just me and two teenage girls. One was having her toes done while the other sat behind her in the small waiting area. When they noticed me, they smirked to each other. I knew they were laughing at me but I wasn't bothered.

I told the nail technician I wanted BIAB with black gloss and showed her my existing nails. She asked whether I wanted infills, but I explained that I wanted the BIAB removed and reapplied instead.

To start, she gently filed away the glossy top coat and black polish using a small handheld nail drill. Then she poured acetone into a stainless-steel bowl and asked me to soak my fingertips, ensuring the nails were fully submerged. After a few minutes, she removed the remaining BIAB, exposing the bare nails underneath.

Next, she applied what I assume was a base coat, and my fingers were placed under an LED lamp to cure. She then opened a pot of pink builder gel and began applying it in layers, gradually building the shape and curing between each application. Once she was satisfied, she used the nail drill again, this time with a barrel bit, refining the surface until everything looked even and controlled.

Next came the black polish. Two coats, each cured under the lamp.

Even before she finished, I could see the difference.

The surface looked flatter. Cleaner. The light moved across it without catching.

It was the kind of detail most people would never think about, yet I found myself unable to look away from it.

Finally, she applied the top coat, or the “magic coat,” as I like to call it, because it makes the nails so glossy they seem to catch the light in a different way altogether. Once cured, I looked down at my hands and thought, wow.

The black looked deeper somehow.

Not darker.

Just more complete.

I felt genuinely happy with them, more than I expected to be. There was a quiet satisfaction in seeing something that had always been almost right finally feel settled.

 

But that feeling didn’t come alone.

Almost immediately, I felt a flicker of unease.

Not about the nails themselves, they were exactly what I wanted, but about the fact I’d gone somewhere else to get them.

My usual salon came to mind straight away. The people there had always been polite, familiar, consistent. Over time I’d built a kind of routine around going there. Nothing dramatic, just something steady in the background of my life.

And suddenly I had stepped outside of it.

It made me feel strangely disloyal, as though choosing the better result somehow meant rejecting everything that had led me here. Logically, I knew that didn’t make sense. It was a service. A transaction. Nothing more.

Yet logic rarely has much to say about feelings.

I found myself sitting with both emotions at once: satisfaction with the result, and a quiet guilt about how I’d got there.

Over the next day or so, something else began to surface.

Every time I looked at my nails, I noticed them again. The smoothness. The finish. The way the light moved across them without interruption.

And each time, I found myself thinking less about whether it was “better,” and more about why it mattered so much.

Because it wasn’t really about nails. Not entirely.

It was about the feeling of things being slightly wrong, even when they were fine. About noticing small imperfections and not being able to unsee them. About wanting things to feel aligned, even in ways other people might never understand.

For me, that feeling connects to something deeper. As someone who experiences gender dysphoria, the small details of appearance can carry more weight than they appear to on the surface. The way my hands look, the finish, the sense of smoothness and care, these things aren’t just aesthetic preferences. They affect how comfortable I feel in my own body, how present I am in it, how much I can stop thinking about it.

And when something feels even slightly off, it can become disproportionately loud.

After all, most people probably wouldn’t think twice about any of this.

But I do.

And I always have.

The longer I thought about it, the more it became clear that the nails themselves were almost beside the point. What I had really been responding to was the relief of something feeling resolved. Settled. Quiet in a way that didn’t demand attention.

I still appreciate my previous salon. They were part of the process that brought me here, and there’s something to be said for familiarity and routine. But I also have to admit that the result I’ve found elsewhere feels easier to live with day to day.

In the end, that’s what it comes down to.

Not perfection itself, but the search for something that feels more aligned. More settled. More like it belongs.

Whether that ever fully exists is another question.

I only know that when I look down at my hands now, I feel a small sense of calm.

And perhaps that’s enough.

It’s a small thing—nails—but it isn’t nothing.

Sometimes the smallest things reveal more about us than we expect.

 
Thanks for reading, 

Lotte x