THE BIGGEST BITCH AT THE NAIL SALON

“Cara, is it okay if Marina does your nails today?” the owner, Dan, asks me.

An older woman with a burgundy crew cut sitting next to her friend, getting a manicure from someone other than Marina, looks at me, her eyes lowering as she softly offers, “She’s fine…”

I’m not sure why she’s sharing her opinion with me but I look at Dan and chirp, “Sure!”

This is my second time at this particular nail salon, after blowing through at least five others in the past ten months I’ve lived in Florida. There was the one up the road from me (this New Yorker loves a walking distance destination), the only problem was, well, everything.

From the lack of ventilation that made me feel like my lungs were being suffocated by an XL can of acrylic spray from 1987, to the bulbous shape resembling the nose of Mario and/or Luigi the nail tech gave me all three times I showed photos of the most natural, elegant nail shape, to the sheer butchering of my cuticles that left me in acute pain, it became abundantly clear I had to take the adorable, walking distance nail salon off the table.

Then there was the bougie place by the beach with the fancy massage chairs and free wine (most New York nail salons don’t do complimentary drinks and I truly think this is a huge miss for them). Although the salon itself is huge, clean, and serves wine (albeit boxed, Costco Pinot Grigio but hey, when in Rome…or Jacksonville Beach), they just aren’t up to speed on trends. I asked for tasteful, classic French once and the white tips were about as thick as the lines in a cross walk. As was the hard gel on my nails. Hard pass.

And who could forget the adorable place in the “artsy” area of town that truly had so much potential until the cops were called and my nail tech almost went to jail for fist fighting a patron.

I walk over and sit at the white marble table, stretching my hands across to meet Marina’s.

“What are we doing today?” she asks softly, surveying my fingers.

“I’d like the same shape, just shorter. I’m a writer. I type all day and they’re a little too long for me right now. I’m working on a book so I spend a lot of time on the keyboard and the long nails slow me down.” (Why I always feel the need to add nine hundred extra details about my life is beyond me, but you can always count on me to share them).

Marina takes out a nail file and gets to work. I am immediately confused that she is not cutting my nails down a bit before filing them, as I’m asking for a considerably shorter look, but I roll with it. A few minutes pass after she saws off my hard-earned length, she begins the shaping process.

“Square with soft edge?” she asks.

“Yes please,” as I pull out a Pinterest reference photo for the third time to make sure she has the image of the soft, milky pink natural nails of my dreams burned in her brain.

She finishes shaping and filing my nails and asks me what I think. I look down to see what I can best describe to you as a duck’s webbed feet. My own nails, that I actually love the natural shape of, are now fanned out into thick, V-shaped wedges. Horrified, I tell her, “Thinner.”

She shakes her head yes and gets back to work. A few minutes later, she presents my own hands to me again.

There is no difference.

I force a fake smile and calmly explain, while pointing to the paddle-like sides, “I’d like this part to be more narrow. They are too wide.”

She goes back to work, unfazed, and then begins applying the hard gel. “We’ll file more later.”

I begin to dissociate to my Spotify playlist, knowing deep down this is not a good situation. Ariana Grande is cooing in my ear about saying that shit with your chest and I am hanging on by a thread trying not to ask, with my chest, if someone else can take over my manicure that is getting more and more hopeless with every pass under the UV light.

I catch a glimpse of my thumbnail and immediately wish I hadn't. Beneath the sheer pink gel, which has been applied with all the precision of a blind person, the surface looks like the craters of the moon.

I decide I need to speak up. “Excuse me, can you smooth this out?”

Marina looks at me as if I just began speaking German. I take a deep, frustrated breath and desperately try to make eye contact with another nail tech. Any nail tech. Someone to help intercept this disaster-in-motion. Nobody lifts their head.

Still seeming utterly baffled by my request, I decided to turn to Dan. It’s time to call in the big guns.

“Excuse me, maybe I’m miscommunicating, but does this look smooth to you?”

Dan shakes his head no and mutters something in Russian to Marina. “She will fix it, “he assures me.

Now I'm so done with caring
What you think, no, I won't hide
Underneath your own projections
Or change my most authentic life

The Power of Ariana Grande consumes me and I do the unthinkable. I ask Marina to stop and ask Dan if someone else can do my nails.

He pauses and assesses the room. Slowly surveying each nail station. “Can you come back in a few days?” he asks.

I am now enraged. I glance at my phone and realize I have been here over two hours. My nails look worse than when I arrived with a grown out, month-long manicure.

“Unfortunately I can’t. I’m leaving for New York in two days and my schedule is packed.”

“Okay, if you can wait fifteen minutes, Tina can take over.”

I agree and Tina attempts to fix Marina’s mess. I spend another thirty minutes only to have my nails re-buffed and smoother, but they are still flippers and I am now furious.

I collect my things and head to the register, looking down at my own hands in disgust and defeat. Dan tells me there’s no charge, but suggests that this is just my natural nail shape. Tina backs him up. He tells me another tech can correct them tomorrow. I feel like I’m being gaslit so hard I’m beginning to question my own body. I say yes and I decide when I wake up this morning that there’s no way in hell I’m spending another four hours of my life negotiating what I want with someone who will never understand.

As I sipped my coffee this morning I wondered if all this nail salon micromanagement is a personality flaw. Am I just a high maintenance bitch? Or do I just want things done the way I want? Does that make me a difficult person? To expect to receive what I ask for?

What infuriates me is that men never seem to ask themselves these questions. They don’t wonder if they’re being a “bitch” when they ask twice for what they want. They don’t replay a scenario seven hundreds times in their mind twenty-four hours later, wondering if they were “too much.” They’re rarely called “difficult” or “high maintenance” if they have a standard for their life.

Somewhere along the way, women were made to feel like they were being rude for having preferences and expectations. We were taught that correcting someone is mean. That advocating for what we want is embarrassing or dramatic. So we stay in places, like nail salons or marriages, for far too long. We smile through our discomfort whether it’s a shitty manicure or a sexual advance.

Maybe all these nail salon nightmares are teaching me that I’m not difficult. Maybe I’m just a woman who knows exactly what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it. Or to walk away when she’s not getting it.

Maybe one day I won’t have to write an entire essay convincing myself that it’s okay to speak up for myself.

And maybe every time I look down at these hideous duck nails for the next two weeks, they’ll remind me of how powerful I actually am.