Me at Aiming Low: Save Me From The Bleeding Cuticles Nail Polish Effect. It Lacks Sex Appeal.

Read my latest piece at Aiming Low, "Save Me From The Bleeding Cuticles Nail Polish Effect. It Lacks Sex Appeal.":

How do I avoid the dreaded shredded cuticle? How do I paint my nails without painting half my fingers? To top coat or not to top coat? Do you have any nail tips that actually work?

Tyin' The Knot!

I'm going through this very femme-y phase lately.



I have struggled with gender ever since I became aware of the fact that not everyone had the same junk. I think I must have been about three. In my brain, I am neither this nor that. I am between genders. My body, though, is female as all get out. It's busty and soft in quite a few places, and I find it pretty irritating, because clothing this body is a bitch. If tops aren't built to foist my bosoms upon the general populace, they end up either hanging off me mumu-style or looking downright matronly.

This isn't about my boobs, though. I don't even know why I went there. I apologize.

What this is about, though, is my new, uncharacteristic nail polish fetish. It started with Revlon's Mon Cherry cherry-scented nail polish, because, come on, it smelled like cherries! And then I ended up with Rimmel's Stiletto Red, because I wanted some red nail polish that didn't smell like cherries. And then I found a cheap bottle of a baby blue nail polish called My Lifesaver from Nicole's Justin Bieber One Less Lonely Girl line, which really should have tipped me off that I was developing a problem. And then I wanted something with a little bit of a sharper edge and bought Sally Hansen's Chartreuse Chase.

I was on a short break from my out-of-the-house job today, wandering through Shoppers on my way to pick up a bottle of water, when I came across a display of Sally Hansen nail polish in metallic shades. I found one I liked that was on sale and bought it, because I have reds and blues but no metallics, and what's a nail polish collection without metallics?

I kind of hate myself for having thoughts like that sometimes, but there you go. I have a nail polish collection now, and I am apparently completing it. I am also apparently shouting about it a lot on the internet. I have written about it not once, not twice, not thrice, not four times, and not five times (in reference to an entry that will be on Aiming Low later this week), but now SIX TIMES.

Anyway, my deepening obsession brought in this new shade, which is called Tyin' the Knot!.

TYIN' THE KNOT!

It comes with its own exclamation point. If I could punch a proper noun in that proper noun's throat, I would do it to this one. WA-POW. Take that nail polish name with too much punctuation what's making a sad effort to make marriage sound street.

I still like the colour, though.



The trouble is that now I'm having thoughts about how I must also own a warm tone of metallic to broaden the new metallics arm of my nail polish collection, because NOW MY COLLECTION IS GROWING ARMS. The new colour will probably be named something extra stupid like Golden Wedding, Yo!, and I will have to mentally stab it with forks to no avail while saying things to the Palinode like Look how nice my new nail polish is! and See how it goes with my favourite necklace? and Isn't it cute? Just look at it! and My fingers are sparkly!

The Palinode is an exceedingly patient human being.

Hopefully, this spate of femme-ing out is short-lived, because, while female drag can be fun in the short term, my feminism's getting cramps from all the recoiling.

Help! Help! I've Been Bieber-ized!

"Guess my age," the customer said.

I hate it when people ask me to guess their age. It's a trap every time. No exceptions.

"I'm terrible at guessing people's ages," I said.

"No, really. Guess how old I am." She kept grinning at me like she could barely contain this really sweet secret.

"Oh, I couldn't. I have no idea. Really." Mentally, I was crab-walking away into my happy place.

"Well, let me guess yours, then," she said. She studied my face and looked at the skin around my eyes. "You're 28, aren't you?"

I was so thrilled with her guessing me ten years younger than I am that I, in turn, did the same for her. She looked pleased.

Being that I haven't escaped our culture's false valuation of youth, I decided to celebrate by buying myself some nail polish the colour of 1950s kitchen appliances.

What I didn't notice at the time is that my nail polish came with extra Justin Bieber.



The Biebs! He's in my girl varnish!

My new nail polish was supposed to be a celebration of my youthy zestfulness, but, once I found out that it was actually a Bieber-ized shade known as My Lifesaver, I just felt kind of weird. It just doesn't seem right for a thirty-eight-year-old to have anything from the Biebs near her person unless she is his close relative.

Like, if the Palinode started wearing Selena Gomez socks or body glitter or something, I would think HELL NO, SIR, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.

Instead of youthful, I feel like a weird old lady, and now I can't wipe the image of the Palinode in Gomez-ized body glitter out of my brain.

Not that that is such a huge stretch of the imagination.