I’m a boy and I like wearing nail polish.
My mom always told me to pursue what I like; she would say, “create a path built by passion, don’t follow the path of expectation. But to my adversity, passion does not always yield skill. When I started painting my nails, I realized I lacked the experience they had accumulated over years of painting their nails on the weekends while I was on the field during soccer games. After months of practicing every night after the rest of my family was asleep, I had finally conquered my shaky hands and could paint well enough to make my sisters proud.
I thought the confidence to finally sport bold, electric blue nails in my conservative town would sprout from hours of practice to perfect my brush stroke and finding the perfect color, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Every morning, the fear of social outcasting of Hester Prynne proportions felt like an icy shower on a winter morning, and ultimately drove me to remove my night’s handiwork. It took about a year to realize that the extrinsic motivation would not suffice
I woke up early, applied my favorite pale mauve polish, threw on an underrated outfit, and darted past my parents through the door without more than a simple ‘bye’. I didn’t want them to notice my nails, so I sought the comfort of my school where my peers would hopefully be more …show more content…
The act I wished to be a subtle form of self expression was perceived as an unintelligible form of rebellion. People began to probe into private areas such as sexuality, gender identification, and family values. While uncomfortable at the time, the new challenges in my path catalyzed my interest in identity, LGBT issues, and social activist causes. Every tense conversation about femininity - which made me so nervous I stumbled over the word like Nemo when pronouncing ‘anemone’ - was a small leap toward embracing my identity, and overcoming internalized
My mom always told me to pursue what I like; she would say, “create a path built by passion, don’t follow the path of expectation. But to my adversity, passion does not always yield skill. When I started painting my nails, I realized I lacked the experience they had accumulated over years of painting their nails on the weekends while I was on the field during soccer games. After months of practicing every night after the rest of my family was asleep, I had finally conquered my shaky hands and could paint well enough to make my sisters proud.
I thought the confidence to finally sport bold, electric blue nails in my conservative town would sprout from hours of practice to perfect my brush stroke and finding the perfect color, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Every morning, the fear of social outcasting of Hester Prynne proportions felt like an icy shower on a winter morning, and ultimately drove me to remove my night’s handiwork. It took about a year to realize that the extrinsic motivation would not suffice
I woke up early, applied my favorite pale mauve polish, threw on an underrated outfit, and darted past my parents through the door without more than a simple ‘bye’. I didn’t want them to notice my nails, so I sought the comfort of my school where my peers would hopefully be more …show more content…
The act I wished to be a subtle form of self expression was perceived as an unintelligible form of rebellion. People began to probe into private areas such as sexuality, gender identification, and family values. While uncomfortable at the time, the new challenges in my path catalyzed my interest in identity, LGBT issues, and social activist causes. Every tense conversation about femininity - which made me so nervous I stumbled over the word like Nemo when pronouncing ‘anemone’ - was a small leap toward embracing my identity, and overcoming internalized