From a very young age, all of us have been conditioned into believing that men and women are supposed to look and dress differently. Baggy t-shirts or shorts or even short hair were ‘guy things’. Similarly, earrings, long hair, nail polish, etc. were ‘girly’. I, for example, was called a tomboy all my childhood because I wore clothes that weren’t feminine enough. Guys, on the other hand, find their masculinity to be threatened if they wear pink or don’t have a ‘tough’ physique.
Over the years, society started being more accepting of people who dressed differently than they were supposed to. Guys started wearing earrings and grow their hair long and girls started wearing suits to work. However, society tends to pull up its guard when it comes across something radical – like a guy wearing nail paint.
I say that because stand-up comedian Varun Grover recently stood on the other end of judgemental and mean comments because he posted a picture of himself and his cat where his nails were spotted to be painted, reports HuffPost India.
He took to his Instagram stories to address the issue.
He claimed that while many women left him lovely and encouraging messages about his painted nails, some men didn’t hold back from saying nasty things to him.
“This is one of the final frontiers of masculinity. Long-hair, ear-studs, sensitivity – all have been accepted by men as unisex but nail-paint is still crossing the line,” he wrote.
Varun Grover then goes on to explain why he wears nail-paint in the first place and it’s quite simple. It’s also why many women paint their nails – because their hands look pretty.
“It feels so bizarre that a simple act of putting colour on your nails can be considered so gendered and scandalous,” he says.
Fear and therefore retaliation of the unknown (in this case, men wearing nail-paint) is common. However, what is ‘common’ may not always be healthy. What is right is for people to have the choice to live their lives in any way they want, as long as they aren’t hurting someone.
It is not us but the conditioning that makes us retaliate. What we as a society can do is unlearn every gender-specific notion that we have had and be more accepting of people.