{"id":3444,"date":"2013-01-18T22:50:30","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T03:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=3444"},"modified":"2013-01-18T23:05:31","modified_gmt":"2013-01-19T04:05:31","slug":"manfaq-friday-a-painted-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=3444","title":{"rendered":"ManFAQ Friday: A Painted Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here we are, another Friday, and\u00a0it’s answer time at the ManFAQ<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Once again\u00a0I don my manly mantle as Sage of the Sexes, helping demystify the more malodorous gender for those of the gentler, as we add to the list of questions women have asked about men over the years.\u00a0\u00a0Actual questions, posed by real women, and answered by a REAL man.<\/p>\n

What could go wrong?<\/p>\n

\n

Question:\u00a0<\/strong> Why do\u00a0we women have to make ourselves pretty and do our nails, but guys don’t?\u00a0 Why don’t I see nail polish on men?<\/em><\/p>\n

Answer:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 Ah ha!\u00a0 I heard this question, and what did I see?\u00a0 I saw an opportunity for….\u00a0 SCIENCE!<\/p>\n

That’s right.\u00a0 Only through empirical evidence would I be able to provide a completely accurate and objective answer to this obviously burning question.<\/p>\n

\"I'm<\/a>

I’m Fabulous!<\/p><\/div>\n

It just so happened that I was in a position to get a manicure anyway – sometimes life just conspires to throw you into your fate – and so I got the first manicure I’ve ever had in my entire life.\u00a0 After a full 90 minutes of\u00a0creaming, clipping, shaping, cuticling, priming, coating,\u00a0pumping, painting, drying, and primping, I had fabulous nails.\u00a0 Since I lead a double life working on an Army Post, I chose Army Green, except with sparkles!<\/p>\n

What do you mean, those couldn’t<\/strong> be\u00a0my nails?\u00a0 You don’t believe me?\u00a0 Fine.<\/p>\n

Here’s another picture.<\/p>\n

\"Really<\/a>

Really Fabulous!<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, I know – I’m fabulous!\u00a0 The nails highlight the hat, and the hat works with everything<\/strong>, as we all know.<\/p>\n

I left the polish on for 10 days, here in January, which included a full week in the office and out to many public places.\u00a0 So, why don’t all the guys you know get their nails painted?\u00a0 And I’ll cheerfully conceded that they don’t – even my mostly flamingly fabulous friends don’t (as a rule, at least) walk around with their nails done.\u00a0 Why not?<\/p>\n

Let me review for you all the reactions I got to my amazingly Army Green Sparkling nails.\u00a0 First was disbelief, from most of the family and coworkers.\u00a0 Next came the laughter, mostly of the “I can’t believe you did that” variety.\u00a0\u00a0 Then there were the inevitable questions:\u00a0 “Have you, um, started a new, um, phase in your life?”<\/p>\n

To some I explained what I was doing in a nail salon, to others I merely said, “Science!” and moved on with the conversation.\u00a0 The interesting bits to me were more the non-reactions, which were, for the most part, very carefully studied non-reactions.\u00a0 The first day I walked in with my newly gleaming gelled-up nails, I happened to have a meeting scheduled with about 10 big guys – manly men – with the Army.\u00a0 There I was, front and center in a small room at a small table, drumming my fingers on the table while all these guys – not a woman there – very carefully didn’t ask me about the nails.<\/p>\n

I interviewed a guy for a job we’re hiring for, later that week, and over the course of 30 or so minutes, he carefully didn’t ask me a thing about them. \u00a0Mind you, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from them, but he didn’t say a word.<\/p>\n

So, why don’t we wear polish more often?\u00a0 The person who had the hardest time getting used to the nails was me.\u00a0 I touch type, for the most part, and every now and then I’d glance down at my keyboard and freak out to see my mother’s hands doing my typing. \u00a0I hadn’t realized, up to now, the extent to which I have my mother’s hands, but seeing mine with painted nails was deja vu all over again – I knew those hands! \u00a0It took a fraction of a second to realize that it wasn’t my mother typing, and another fraction of a second to realize I wasn’t having a really bad acid flashback.<\/p>\n

And then there came the big day, 10 days later. \u00a0After paying a nice young lady, whom I couldn’t understand at all, good money to put it on, I went to another salon and paid another\u00a0nice young lady, whom I couldn’t understand at all, good money to take it off again. \u00a0While the first experience was pleasant, even if it did lack the happy ending I was curious about (turns out not to be that kind of salon), the second was, how to put this – less so. \u00a0My new and incomprehensible friend started by savagely attacking my nails, cuticles, fingers, knuckles, and indeed pretty much any part of my anatomy that she could easily reach from her side of the desk with the largest sandpaper block legally allowed in a salon. She bruised, scraped, smacked, and scalped my nails until the finishing top coat was toast and the exposed underbellies of my fabulous green nails were naked to the elements. \u00a0Those elements were quickly replaced with 100% pure acetone.<\/p>\n

Yes, my battered, bruised, and bludgeoned fingers, some of them scarred and scratched from their bout with the sandpaper of doom, were submerged in\u00a0the strongest consumer-grade solvent available, usually used for thinning fiberglass and prepping metal for industrial purposes. \u00a0You can probably imagine without my recounting them the various words I used when the scratched parts of my tender hands hit the heated – did I mention she heated it? – acetone, but in case you lack for imagination, please assume that those words included the time-honored phrase “fuckitty-ow.”<\/p>\n

After a mere 3 minutes of this, I was ready to give up the location of the rebel base, but my smiling\u00a0interlocutor had other plans for my hands. \u00a0\u00a0I tried to tell her that I’d confess to anything, just please, let me go, but that’s when she pulled out the pliers – and the paring knife. \u00a0I was hoping she was just going to kill me at that point, but no. \u00a0She pulled my hand from the acetone, causing it to freeze, since the hot acetone evaporated faster than lines of cocaine at Charlie Sheen’s house. \u00a0She then proceeded to hold each finger at an angle that would make\u00a0Euclid blush and tried to scrap the entire fingernail clean off. \u00a0\u00a0She failed in each attempt, which caused her to dump them back in the acetone – when did a solution of 100% acetone look like sweet relief from pain? – and try again with the next hand.<\/p>\n

Twenty minutes later, I was holding a few shaking dollars out with the stumps of my nubby little hands, paying for the\u00a0privilege\u00a0of simply leaving at that point, and running for the door as though my life depended on it. \u00a0The ends of my fingers looked like pinkies. \u00a0(Pinkie has two meanings, you know, and in this case I mean not the little finger on each hand, but rather “baby mice.”)<\/p>\n

And so, let me answer, finally, your question. \u00a0<\/em>Why don’t you see nail polish on men?\u00a0 Because taking that shit off again hurts, and we’re wussies. \u00a0Ow ow ow ow fuckitty-ow. \u00a0We’re glad you do it – honest – but we don’t understand why. \u00a0No one’s worth that kind of hassle and torture. \u00a0That’s just crazy!<\/p>\n

But they sure looked nice, didn’t they? \u00a0For 10 days in January, I was\u00a0fabulous!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Now you know.\u00a0 Please, feel free to comment!\u00a0 Also, forward any questions you\u2019d like answered to BUMD \u2013 at \u2013 biguglymandoll.com!\u00a0 As always, your anonymity is guaranteed!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sage of the Sexes, demystifying the more malodorous gender for those of the gentler. Actual questions, posed by real women, and answered by a REAL man. What could go wrong?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3444"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3444"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3470,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3444\/revisions\/3470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}