Nail art is a creative way to paint, decorate, enhance, and embellish the nails. It is a type of artwork that can be done on fingernails and toenails, usually after manicures or pedicures. A manicure and a pedicure are beauty treatments that trim, shape, and polish the nail. Often these procedures remove the cuticles and soften the skin around the nails. Types of manicures can vary from polish on natural nails, dipping powder, and acrylic nails.
The nail care industry has been growing like never before ever since the invention of modern nail polish. In 2012, the United States witnessed a surging popularity of nail art. in the same year, a short nail art documentary was released: “NAILgasm”. The film explored the growing trend of nail art; from women across the world to high fashion runways. Mostly women, but also men commonly use YouTube Instagram and Pinterest to learn how to do the newest and most interesting designs at home.
Nail art is also a way to create its own identity through fashion, using colours and shapes as a disruption of childhood and entering to the female teen/adult world, also leaving the influence of their parents to create their own selves.
The nail is also part of the puzzle of mounting the gender identity, the nails for teenagers and adult women represents a piece of the symbol of what is a woman and how the woman should present itself. Even though the women use nail art to express their womanliness, the different types of art define as a woman with particular personality, as using French manicure (delicate) or using black nails (aggressive).
The trend of metrosexual (term first said in 1994, but became a trend a decade later) men in the 2000s brought to the males also the sensibility of taking care of their hands and nails. As David Beckham, demonstrating how a football player, a husband and a father could also take care of himself showed men that they could also invest money and time in appearance and still keep their masculinity.
Before the metrosexual trend, the punk subculture also used the black nail polish in a “dirty” way to show how rebel they were against social rules, also the nail polish in a role of showing their disdain to any rules and meant to shock the society.