The Long and the Short of It: Lena Dunham on Her Nail Journey

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My babysitter Noreen wore long acrylics in frosted pink that, to my five-year-old self, were the epitome of glam. I loved to watch her hands as she fried a grilled cheese, finger-combed watermelon-scented mousse through her bangs, or twisted the phone cord as she chatted to her boyfriend, Gene. Even when one broke and she had to hold it in place with a Band-Aid, I swooned at the impossibly adult je ne sais quoi of being a woman with nails to boot, imitating her by sticking strawberries on the ends of my fingers or forming my own with red Silly Putty.

Meanwhile, my mother and her friends were clean girls before there was a name for the aesthetic. As artists in the male-dominated ’80s, they were wearing loose-fitting suiting by Comme des Garçons and cutting their nails to the quick, partially for practicality (they were wielding paintbrushes and cameras, sculpting and performing) and also to prove that their femininity didn’t prevent them from playing in the big leagues—a stigma that culturally we’ve at least pretended to abandon. But, as always, it takes work to look effortless—my mother had her nails buffed and painted with a clear lacquer every other week, a process I watched like a hawk, often grabbing pinks and purples and begging her to give them a try. The closest she came was classic red for special occasions. Meanwhile, I collected Wet n Wild polishes and lined them up on my windowsill like I was the proud owner of a rainbow itself.

In high school in Brooklyn, long nails festooned with sunsets or airbrushed with the heavy tracks of monster trucks, screaming CAUTION against yellow paint, became an accessory as coveted as nameplate earrings and Timberland boots. (Like so many good things, nail art was co-opted from the hip-hop looks of people like Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown that began influencing us all in the early aughts and still do today. Throw in the kawaii nail art of Japan, and rough it up with runway-ready piercings and gems, and you had decades of trends.) My mother found acrylics “too mature” and made a highly specific rule that I could wear any nail color I wanted as long as it didn’t read as adult—baby blues, electric greens but absolutely no red, no coral, not even a pink. Through my 20s I continued to associate bright nails with personal expression, and was an early adopter of nail art salons like New York’s Valley Nails and Vanity Projects, where I’d watch with jealousy as the burlesque dancer in the seat beside me applied inch-long tips studded with faux rubies.

But once I reached my 30s, a combination of maturity, practicality, and the fatigue that comes with increased responsibility meant that the closest I came to turning a look was a few coats of polish on a special occasion—the rest of the time, it was a quick clip when they started to look ragged, stained with watercolor and pen, uneven, and stress-bitten.

But when the writers strike hit this past summer, suddenly I had oodles of time stretching ahead of me, nowhere to be and no time to be there. The last time I’d felt that way was long before I started my career, when I’d spend high school afternoons in the drug store testing colors on my thumb or a lazy Saturday in my earliest 20s requesting the technicians at Valley replicate everything from my dog’s face to oozing slime. Even when I went to Japan, a mecca of nail art, it was to shoot an episode of Girls and I was too rushed to decorate every finger, simply getting one of my tattoos re-created on my thumbs (although I did come home with boxes and boxes of press-ons, including a set that depicted smiling cups of pudding dancing on thumb and forefinger).

And so came my summer of nails, the longer the better, inspired by Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman, by early Lana Del Rey videos back when she called herself the “gangsta Nancy Sinatra,” by Lil’ Kim matching her nails to her pasties. I studied nail shapes (coffin? Who knew) and started a Pinterest, enjoying—in no particular order—’70s chevrons, a medieval harlequin pattern, ditzy florals, red glitter and black stilettos that looked like Morticia Addams was headed to a Berlin rave. It made every email I sent feel like an event and every book require a hand-selfie (helfie?). No matter your level of daily dress-up, your gender expression, or your age, there’s nothing quite like a nail to make every point you make feel, well, pointed.

I loved every second of it. Yes, it required reading a surprisingly lengthy article about how to text with tips (pro move: Use the sides of your thumbs, like you’re playing Nintendo), and I had to carry tweezers to remove my credit card from the ATM. (Pop-top seltzer cans? Out of the question.) But what I lost in efficiency, I more than made up for in the feeling of slinky glamour that my newly extended fingers gave me. (And as a girl with hands that resemble a bouquet of hot dogs, that’s always a boost, self-love be damned.)

“You’re texting like you’re 98,” my husband noted (though even he had to admit it was worth it for the back scratches).

But summer always fades to fall, and when our strike ended (hooray! We did it!) and it was time to head back to work, it became clear that my nails were going to be a hindrance when it came to everything from doing quick rewrites, to flipping through the pages of my binder on set, to leashing up the dogs quickly in the morning, to buttoning my jeans and lacing my sneakers (summer had been all nail-proof cotton dresses and old-school Adidas slides). And so off they came, revealing the kind of cracked nails you’d see in the “before” portion of an infomercial at 3 a.m. Paging Sally Hansen.

But when my Vogue editor approached me, suggesting I try a week as a clean girly (to quote the Gen Z’ers in my office) and a week as Miss Thang, I gladly accepted. After all, I was going to be manicured by none other than Michelle Class, who boasts clients such as Kate Moss (clean clean clean) and Lily Allen (no time for the short-nail trend, according to Michelle). The nail artist recently gave Allen a matte-gray coffin shape so long I would be forced to lie in bed all day. We would try an over-the-top moment of glamour, and then I would embrace the new desires of nail fetishists: Spring 2024 runways went for the viral “glazed doughnut” and “ballet-core” vibes (Christian Siriano, Sandy Liang), with Proenza Schouler showing a classic short crimson that still reads squeaky clean.

After rescheduling with Michelle because my dog had an asthma attack and I needed not to have my hands in a gel machine so I could work her nebulizer (an early omen that epic nails might not work for me), we made an appointment for a Friday afternoon. As Michelle worked away, I watched the feed of footage from set on two iPads and dictated my notes to a patient coworker, my hands shaking with the desire to get back to typing. My kitten begged for treats as my (other) dog coughed up grass. I could do nothing about any of it. I felt grateful I am not yet changing diapers as I tried to unwrap a sandwich to little success, filling a not-yet-finished nail with an unintended scoop of avocado. When my husband returned home and asked why I hadn’t finished putting on the duvet cover, I simply held up my new almond-shaped gel tips—nude until just above the quick, with a tortoiseshell tip and an arc of gold—as explanation.

While these nails felt the best of any “falsies” I’d ever worn, light and natural, they were still precarious. They elicited oohs and ahhs from my colleagues, but consternation when it took me about 15 minutes longer than usual to rewrite the scenes for the day. Meanwhile, after three days of telling myself I would remember how to text with them on again (and three days of asking my husband to please do everything from pulling up my Spanx to telling my parents not to worry that I hadn’t responded to the family group chat), I took to leaving voice notes instead, all of which started: “Sorry, but I have fake nails at the moment.”

It wasn’t that I’d been good at handling the nails over the summer and had now somehow forgotten, but rather that I’d enjoyed my summer of the nail as a distraction from a strike that lasted months longer than we’d hoped, as concern for colleagues and below-​the-​line workers mounted and free time turned to free-​floating anxiety. The nails worked for carrying picket signs, reading books I’d kept in a pile by the bed all year, even painting murals on my walls (all the hobbies I adopted in place of my beloved day job). On those lazy days, I could take my routine slow, devising cunning tricks for doling out pet food from vacuum-​sealed packages, washing dishes like I was more breakable than the plates (nothing like a broken nail to remind you of our essential human fallibility). But by the end of a week with Michelle’s mob-​wife look, I had to admit—​sadly, because I felt like a pop star and criminal mastermind all at the same time—that it was clean-​girl time.

Hours before I was due to attend a film premiere, a lovely nail technician (who was as impressed by Michelle’s work as everyone, and felt it was almost a sacrilege taking a literal jackhammer to the nails) cut me back down to size, presenting me with so many impossible-​to-​distinguish nudes before applying OPI Bubble Bath. I felt my shoulders slump lower and my conviction that I could rob a bank without consequence disappear.

Luckily my stylist was there to talk sense back into me—​my looks for the evening included a Simone Rocha tulle cocktail dress bedecked in delicate blue bows, whose matching gloves would have been immediately shredded by my talons. Next was an Issey Miyake Grecian-​draped gown in sheer silver—and if there’s a fashion ambassador for the modern clean girl (which, we should note, isn’t just a term for girls, or people who shower a lot; anyone can be a clean girl with the right highlighter and Hailey Bieber–approved moisturizer), it would be Issey. I was reminded of my first Met Gala, when Hamish Bowles—a man I would trust in any style emergency—encouraged me to wipe off my nail art: “Not for right here, not for right now,” he smiled. Now I felt, with my child-length nails but adult sophistication, sexy in a more sly way. Plus, I was able to pull up my own underpants. Now that’s a win-win.

So, was there a victor in the experiment? Who had triumphed in the face-off between sleek practicality and sensual excess? The short nail may be winning on runways at the moment, but Michelle told me that her clients who are “long-nail people will always be long-nail people.” It’s not a trend for them, but a way of life. It would be easy to say that the devotees must have pampered lives, not working with their hands, but how many times have we seen someone dole out cash at a register or corral their kids with a nail as long as some pinkies themselves? The nail becomes a nexus of power for them, just as the absence of a long nail served the same purpose for the women I knew growing up.

And is it wrong to say that I may not belong to one sect or the other but am, instead, whatever the nail equivalent of bi(coastal) is? I love each expression precisely because of how different it can make me feel, taking me from a beacon of old-school femininity (with a twist) to something more practical but equally delicate. If the short nail is Audrey Hepburn, the long one is Sophia Loren. In modern terms, let’s say my Natalie Portman sun is facing off against my powerful Cardi B rising. And don’t we all contain multitudes?