Not sure why I felt compelled to look this up today — probably because I found myself asking the above question of a fellow doctoral student yesterday — but a Google search for long nails turned up a fascinating site.
The crossovers between long nails and s3xualized fetishism are clear there, but less obvious is what I know from my neighborhood and the Bronx — that nails of an inch or more with complicated paint jobs are simply expected of women in many areas of the US (and apparently the UK as well). It used to drive the urban studies prof I know at Queens up a wall — she’d explain to her students that managerial types looking to hire office workers frowned on long nails, and her students would give her blank looks. The class tensions of nail length would make an interesting paper. I’m sure it’s been done.
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