Siham Hamud, a Muslim student at Uxbridge High School in the UK, refused to wear a shorter skirt on religious grounds, which violated the school’s dress code.
More than 5,000 years ago, the warriors of Babylonia painted their fingernails with kohl to go to battle. More recently, A-list actor Brad Pitt wore nail polish, apparently just for the heck of it.
Yet for some reason, it’s a showstopper when a 17-year-old male in Texas wears nail polish to school?
Granted, women have been practically the only ones decorating their nails for the last few centuries. But custom and convention are no reason for nail polish to be an exclusively female style witness how earrings have become commonplace for men.
The real problem is schools’ efforts to force traditional gender roles on students, including dictating the way boys and girls dress and groom themselves. These rules continue in many areas of the nation. It’s the modern equivalent of making sure that girls play with dolls and boys with toy trucks.
Photo courtesy of Trevor Wilkinson
Take one look at social media these days and it’s clear that nail polish for men is big like, really big. Even before pandemic-induced lockdowns, the trend was growing in popularity thanks to style icons and celebrities like A$AP Rocky, Harry Styles, and Evan Mock. It was so big that
Since then, a lot has happened to say the least but dudes and their nail polish haven t gotten any less visible. In fact, their ranks have only grown, buoyed in large part by platforms like TikTok and the willingness on behalf of more men than ever to experiment with once sacrosanct grooming habits after months of being cooped up at home. The #boynails hashtag has 1.2 million views on TikTok alone on Instagram, there are entire social media accounts dedicated to male nail art, including the aptly-named