PEARLS & AMBER: RATTY NAILS R IN

I read it in the Sunday Style section of the New York Times, so they must know, right?

I read that mangled manicures are A OKAY out in the world of fashionable young women. I guess even fashionable older women too, if they (we) can actually bring ourselves to exist in such a state.

What this means to the layman is one's nailpolish can begin to rip off, crack off, come unglued, look like the moths got to it, and this is the height of NOW. This is to die for nails.

One can even, we are assured, apply for jobs with ratty nails. These days people doing the hiring simply understand the young women sitting before them, in earnest (I would assume) search for a job, not bothering to hide their neglected nails inside a pair of little white gloves, are in touch with the absolute latest way to wear a manicure. Some big jewelry stores, see, have actually hired such rabid looking hands to show their jewelry--

I don't think I'd buy a fifteen thousand dollar ring from a kid whose manicure is passed it's due date. I'd find myself sneaking a look at the state of her hair, her teeth, her...never mind.

I think it is one more way chronically dirty people, the kind who think dirt under the fingernails (and here I leave out gardeners. Their dirty, ragged fingernails are just too sweet for words, smelling like roses and weeds and specially mixed potting soil and all) somehow shows they are but free spirits, dis-interested in the things that don't count...like perfectly manicured nails.

Why, then, did they do their nails in the first place? That's what I want to know. It used to be a neat trick to get oneself to stop chomping on one's nails, because we were always in search of perfect hands, which used to mean...you know, long nails coated with pink, silver, raspberry or pearl white.