An Unironic Ode to the $5 Drugstore Press-On Nails of Yore
I recall having once read a quote from some no-longer-relevant It-girl—which one, I cannot say for sure—about how you can look as disheveled as you want as long as your nails are well-manicured. “Good advice,” I thought to myself, as an individual who for some reason is incapable of making the distinction between looking artfully unkempt and looking downright slovenly.
Good advice though it is, I’ve never quite been able to follow through on it. I hate sitting still for manicures, hate making the time to get manicures, hate waiting for my nails to dry, hate the way they look once they’ve chipped, and hate how seriously I question my fine-motor skills when my hands jerk around as I’m trying to paint them myself. It’s all a disaster, which is why I’ve long settled into a comfortable, if not exactly polished, routine of keeping my nails short, clean, and bare. The normcore of nails, essentially.
But on a recent stroll through the beauty aisles of the Rite Aid right next to my subway stop, which is my idea of sport, I made what I at the time believed would be a regrettable purchase: artificial nails.
Not celebrity-approved “nail wraps.” Not even the overdesigned, bedazzled ones that are, like, so tacky they could actually be kind of cool if only Sarah Snyder or some other Instagram fashion teen would make them happen again. Just straight-up, glue-on artificial nails in a glossy mint green, which is both a color I’d choose in a nail salon and the only option that wasn’t a French manicure.
I went home, applied them in front of the TV while watching the season finale of “Girls,” and have been trying—and failing—to evangelize them ever since. My biggest concern, because I clearly wasn’t worried about looking tacky as hell, was that they’d come off at inopportune moments, like while I was typing, buttoning my jeans, frantically shuffling through my bag for my keys, or any number of necessary life minutiae. I’ve since done all of these things and have retained each and every nail, which is more than I can say for my natural nails, which frequently break while I’m shampooing my hair.
Hand to God, I’m not being ironic—or nostalgic, for that matter—when I say my $5 Nailene So Natural Mint High Gloss Glue-On Nails from the drugstore are my new favorite thing, the way people talk about dad hats or shower shoes. Shiny like a gel manicure and impossible to chip, I’m convinced that they’re actually—no, for real, though—the laziest, least expensive way to upgrade your nail game if you have literally no nail game to speak of. Just steer clear of those French manis, which are still tacky after all these years.
