Don’t let people tell you your 30s will be the best time of your life in a tone that suggests your looks will fade so you better find inner peace. Vicki’s Pick is a weekly beauty column that features Vicki’s all-time favourite beauty products and latest discoveries for women in their 30s who plan on staying pretty on the outside for a long, long time. Inner peace is optional.
There has been no beauty trend in recent history that irked me more than the elaborate nail art trend. Is it just me, or did it seem like a contest in proving once and for all who could be the most useless narcissist on the face of the earth? I don’t trust the kind of people who spend valuable time and money getting Louis Vuitton logos painted on their fingertips just so they can avoid doing manual labour for fear of chipping a nail. I’m even secretly suspicious of the kind of people who always have perfect nails in plain old solid colours. Even if weekly manicures were a possibility for me, I’d still chip the paint off in between appointments carrying the recycling out or defending my title as the reigning underground Fight Club champion. Just kidding! I don’t recycle.
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Calm down… of course I recycle. It’s on the list of things I do regularly just above “wash dishes” and below “type my own articles.” I’m not saying I’m better than the kind of people who have “manicure day” marked on their weekly calendars but still think “garbage day” is some kind of trash-diving flea market for hippies. By all means, if you don’t have to work, and things like volunteering and bettering yourself intellectually don’t appeal to you, it makes sense to get your nails painted every Thursday when the cleaning lady’s making it too awkward to stay home to watch Ellen. I don’t mean to sound bitter. After all, I too get a professional pedicure a few times a year, usually when the calluses on my hard-working feet become so tough that pain and temperature stop registering. That said, I still like to paint my nails from time to time when I want to add dramatic flair to my look.
Although I love a femme fatale red, the problem with painting my nails a dark shade is that when they inevitably start chipping a day later I rarely have the time to touch them up or redo them all together. I can go from looking Old Hollywood glam to resembling Kim Basinger’s body-double in 8 Mile from just seriously scrubbing the stove top. That’s why I’m all about a nice opaque white polish. Even if the hue chips a tad, it’s not as obvious and there’s something edgy about opting for an all-over bold hue usually associated with French manicure tips. The trick is to find a polish that goes on opaque with just two coats of paint and is up for the challenge of washing the odd frying pan and ferociously answering emails. Right now I like Crabtree & Evelyn Snowdrop Nail Lacquer ($6). It dries fast and looks great after just two easy coats and leaves my nails looking like perfect blank canvases – ready to be painted by the awesomeness that is my actual life. No, that’s not some cheesy metaphor. Underground ultimate fighting matches tend to get extremely messy when you’re the defending champion.
