My sister had her nails done the other week. Done as in built – beautifully long and strong, French manicures. I’m doing the low-budget version of it, fixing my own sorry excuses for nails up. It doesn’t look nearly as nice. Although I also got myself little glitters. Real girlie. It’s terribly impractical, but hey… One day I’ll probably have mine done, too. But not today.
There’s something fascinating about long, polished, strong nails. They’re symbols of so much. They signal, for one, that you have a social position where you don’t have to toil, you don’t have to work with your hands; if you did, you could never keep them long and beautiful. Like being pale was a signal of wealth in that you didn’t have to work in the fields, until suntan became a signal that you could afford going abroad and didn’t have to stay in your office all summer.
They’re also sexual symbols, of course, which naturally goes together with the whole not-working-business. If you signal that you don’t need to work, it means that you’re something of a luxury item. And luxury is desirable, no? Also, if you don’t have to work, what do you do? Do you lazy about in your sweats? No, of course not. You lazy about in something completely different. Think lingerie and negligees; jewellery and high heels; Chanel Nr 5 and champagne. And if you can’t really work, then you’re dependent on whoever you’re living with, right? And if you can’t really use your hands, it’s pretty easy to control you, as you can’t really take care of yourself. The same is of course true for high heels (it takes a looong time to learn to run in them, and if you’re wearing stilettos, it’s out altogether), corsets (properly bound, like Scarlett O’Hara, who had a 40-cm-waist, you don’t really breath too well; hence the fainting) and lotus feet (try running with those). It’s sexy to be just a little useless. That’s what luxury is – the stuff that we get that we don’t really have any immediate use for. And dependent. If your woman is dependent of you, you have to show that you’re a real man, who can provide. And she won’t get by without you. Isn’t that sexy? (For those of you who don’t know me: I’m being terribly sarcastic here.)
Then there’s one more thing, that doesn’t really seem to go with the idea of women as luxury items, but bear with me. Picture a woman’s hand, with long, shiny dark red nails. The hand sits on an arm, wrapped around a man’s torso, the hand pushes against the man’s back. Suddenly the woman is digging her nails into the man’s flesh, beyond control… Yes, of course nails are sexual. But why? There are more men interested in long nails than in pain, I reckon. Well… Imagine you have access to this piece of luxury. A piece of luxury which spends a lot of time maintaining it’s status as such. Imagine you have the power – to say nothing of the right – to affect it in such a way that it gives up its control over its attributes. Messy hair, smudged eye-liner, the risk of breaking one of those nails…
To me, nails mean something else.
For as long as I was living with my parents, every night we had the same good night ritual. My mum would come into my room and scratch my back. It always made me calm and relaxed. Like a baby. The best back scratcher, however, was my grandma. She didn’t cut her nails in a smooth half-moon shape like my mum did. She made two swift cuts on each nail, leaving the nails sharp and triangular. Like claws. Actually, that’s what we called them. When we kids wanted her to scratch our backs, we asked her to use her claaaws. Always with emphasis on every single sound (in Swedish: k-e-looor-ö-na – actually klorna. There are phonetic rules behind the weird pronunciation of course. Ask me – or better yet: ask a better phonetician – if you like). I still love having my back scratched. Whenever my sisters and I meet, that’s one way we show our affection for one another; we scratch each other’s backs. That’s what really makes me purr like a cat. Scratch my back – properly, not too hard, not too soft, but just so – and I’m wax in your hands.
This text has taken me forever to type. You see, one way that long nails make you useless is that it gets really hard to type. Especially when the nail polish isn’t dry yet…
9 comments:
Ah! I noticed your talons the other day. Very nice. :-) My own have started getting a bit more stable since I stopped doing "manual labour", as it were... and perhaps being less nervous about that man and hence not nibbling at them...
Like the blog make-over, btw. You can see mine by clicking on me. Yes, we are all a click away - how Winterson.
Puss!
It is well spent time -- yours and that of your suitors. Very pleasant reading, too, and hopefully writing that pays back measurably, when you are shaping the people / situations of your daily dreams. In my own experience, it makes them happen, and in a larger still scope, it even makes them happen more often, rather than just at all.
But, turning the perspective only very slightly, is it not also true that you are to some extent pining for being treated with the reverence and lust of the really rare delicacies you slam (with such exquisite eloquence, I might add)?
I don't mean to suggest it would be double standard (or wrong) to both ridicule and fawn over the thought; I don't hold gender roles harder than to still consider it a woman's right to reduce any man to a drooling slob under their charms, should they want to and be able to. (You certainly don't lack the skill I'm sure; probably to a greater extent the challenge -- something a bit more al dente, to match those brains of yours.)
/ wax under your pen
Johan - of course I enjoy being treated as a piece od luxury; who doesn't? I can't object to that as a gender role issue. My objections are not with my feelings of enjoying feeling beautiful and exquisite with a man. It's with having heard old boyfriends' sentiments that my efforts to look nice aren't terribly interresting as such, but mostly interresting in that I have made some kind of sacrifice for them. I really don't mind adapting to a special someones kinks and desires, but I do mind the idea tht it doesn't matter what I do, bot that the sacrifice itself is the turn-on. Which I's noticed is often the case...
But Johan, you leave the best comments, always! *hugs*
Oh yeah, one more thing: I'm quite happy being the delicacy every once in a while - but not all the time, and I have to be allowed to be anything but a delicacy as well... Or possibly a combination. A kick-ass delicacy. I could live with that. But wait... That's what I do! ;P
Well, the spot for writing the best posts was already taken, so I'm aiming for second best:ing you, in the feedback channel. ;-) (Okay, now I've turned down the subtlety mode a few notches too far, but it's heartfelt, and that is probably much of what makes it so right. And that it's someone pining from a distance over some of the traits you too love best and are proudest of in yourself.)
Making sacrifices, whether symbolic, in acts, disfiguring body mods or submitting to some shackles someone else wants you in has a sense of medieval times to me. I think it is abstractions in the form of symbolism, rather than the real thing, and as such, not as strong to me, when I know what I want. I don't want someone choosing me, at the expense of something else, which is essentially what sacrifices are. It should be an independent choice, combinable with whatever other pleasures there are to life.
Sacrifices forging artificial vulnerabilities are no match for real vulnerability, such as exposing dark matter, being overt about fears, innermosts, dreams, wishes and the inner, private workings of our minds. Flashed neck, open to a deadly blow. Other things signaling, in action, that you are inner circle and considered a safe haven. Broad range emotional space overlaps sans frontières.
And the notion of having you rob yourself of the control of your mind, senses, abilities, comfort, brains, balance, body control and general proper functioning sounds a lot less sexy than charming you free of them, through my own skill and understanding of everything you and how to work that to achieve whatever effect and disability I might temporarily wish to subject you to.
It's like fake and real power. Fake power is used by all the incapable henchmen trying to copy-cat the effects, but not the cause, of real power. They grasp for it, but fail to hold it. So they uphold the illusion of it instead, through forms of submission, upheld by norms and civic obedience-by-default.
Johan - you say it best, as always :) And you make me want to write down my rant about my problems with alpha males, which I've been scetching for a looong while... One of these days! *hugglies*
One of these days is exactly the day I'm looking forward to, though mostly for other reasons (though your alpha thoughts sound tempting indeed); the long awaited trip to southern Sweden, for instance, is scheduled for "one of these days". (The sooner rather than later, the better.)
Typing seems to bring you to mind a lot more frequently, once you start growing claws, by the way. It's both pleasant and breaks my stride at work at the same time, probably much for my insatiable sweet-tooth for huggling getting invoked at any and all hours of the day.
I thought felines had March, females that time of the month and the rest of us the scout's motto (ready on your command, sort of). Or maybe that's actually it; being invoked, one way or the other, tying strings to one's fingers.
Back to pondering whether this is being charmed, or being fan club. I should start scouring your archives for more pleasant noodling on guys, their almost being up to the bar but not quite in a myriad of ways. You really should write that book. (Yes, I know; I get to hear similar things. Maybe it's for being able to own a little piece of you that people want to have, without the overwhelmth of the real thing.)
*basks in the wealth of hugs and huggling*
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