A Black woman’s ode to nail art

Growing up, I loved going to the nail salon. I was enchanted with the tiny bottles of polish that created a rainbow on the wall. I couldn't stop flipping through the booklets of gel nail polish extension options, or the intricate airbrushed designs my mother would never allow me to get. (To be fair, I was nine and had no business with Winnie the Pooh characters on my tiny child fingers.)

Instead, the only options my mom would allow were the soft baby pink of Essie’s “Ballet Slippers” with a small flower design on the ring finger, or a simple French manicure. Though it took until my teens for her to open up to the idea of adding more razzle dazzle, I do remember the exact day I was finally allowed...color. OPI’s “Lincoln Park After Dark” became my favorite polish during my teens and twenties. The dark purple? It perfectly matched my emo tendencies.

Being raised in New York, which has the second biggest selection of nail salons in the US, meant nail salons always felt like home. I could always count on being able to swing by any neighborhood in Brooklyn and Queens and find a shop where multiple languages were spoken between the sound of nail filing and the scent of rubbing alcohol. From shimmers to mattes, customers would walk into a shop with nubby, barely-there nails and leave with claws wrapped in minuscule jewels or designs inspired by Olympic track star Flo-Jo.

My go-to salon, however, was a small shop in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx in New York City. There, the women with full-time day jobs that opted for the longest acrylics always had my attention. They were always so glamorous, confident and cool. These women were my sisters, aunties, and cousins.

The nail salon, like the hair salon, is a sacred space for many women, but especially for Black women. However, only 2% of nail salon workers are Black, according to a 2018 study done by the UCLA Labor Center. One of those technicians is Diana Sabio, also known as Dee — or Digits by Dee on Instagram, where she shares her nail art catalog.

A fellow native New Yorker, I've been going to Dee for almost four years now. She's been working in the beauty space for 10 years, after starting as an assistant to her makeup artist uncle at 16. He was the one, she says, who inspired her to attend cosmetology school. By 19, she was working in salons.

“I always had a soft spot for nails, because I found myself itching to go home and add on the art they weren’t able to do at the salon," says Dee. “This was when YouTubers like Cute Polish were putting their tutorials on the internet.  I was also heavily influenced by Fruits magazine and the Gyaru and Hime nail trends. I was always disappointed that I couldn’t find anyone here in NYC to do that style of art.”

My journey to find Dee was a long one. Once I got to college, I was usually doing my own nails, stealing whatever nail polish my mother had lying around or borrowing my roommate's. I was a lot less experimental back then, still too afraid to try acrylics or longer styles. Occasionally I'd go to a salon when I wanted to truly pamper myself, but being in my 20s and extremely frugal, that was not always an option. I was already paying to get curly cuts, highlights, and eyebrows done, and more, another service may have bankrupted me.

By finally, by 2019, I was ready to find a regular nail shop. I would try out different friends' suggestions, which were all fine but never exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to do more interesting designs, but hadn't really had the language for it yet. Still, I was enjoying getting manicures as regularly as my budget would allow me...and then, COVID hit. Like most of us, during the pandemic I was doing my own nails and trying to play around with color as much as possible. But here's the thing: I love to paint but never picked up the skill on my own nails.

So I decided to try out a shop in my Crown Heights, Brooklyn neighborhood: Marché. The Black-owned shop is a cultural concept shop and nail salon that's also attached to a restaurant I frequent. Marché was known for doing abstract nail art. Once it was safe enough to head back to the salon, I decided to finally book an appointment with a technician named Dee.

What started as a small way to find some normalcy in the pandemic became a space for me to tap into my own creativity. I consider my sessions with Dee to be mini collaborations: I show her my inspirations, then we work together to make art. My monthly trek to the nail salon feels like home. Every four to five weeks, I get to sit for three to four hours and be the women I used to look up to at the shop, while spending time with an incredible artist.

"What I love most about doing nails is seeing the boost of confidence my art gives the wearer," Dee says. "I always like to say I don’t just hold hands, I hold space. Because we need to have beauty spaces where we can show up as ourselves and be lifted for who we are, and not what we aren’t."

As a young girl, I wanted to paint my nails red, wear pink lipstick, and wear platform boots like Scary Spice, but I was never allowed by my mom. Now as an adult, I understand that being the Black daughter of a Black mother, the reason she limited me to pretty pastels and French manicures was because she was trying to protect me from the outside world. Red polish, she thought, could signal that I was “fast.”

“As a Black woman, I’ve always been hyper-aware of how our self-expression is policed. Often we’re expected to show up as how society will tolerate us and not how we feel most in touch with ourselves,” Dee says.

“Nails have always been a subtle way to assert your style, whereas hair and makeup carry a lot more weight on people’s first impressions," she continues. "It’s important for me as a nail artist to hold tight and continue the legacy of the bold tastemakers before me who decided to try something new despite the possibility of not being accepted."

Like many young Black girls, I could not always explore outside the ridged stereotypes that society has placed on us. So often we either shrink ourselves...or we become louder.

My visits with Dee have become a monthly ritual where I wrap my nails in all the shades I can possibly ask for. My hands are sometimes dripping in charms, gold chrome, or seashells. Ombre, airbrushed, negative spaced designs — you name it, I've tried it. Now, I'm adorned like the femmes before and after me: Diana Ross, Flo Jo, Cardi B, and Megan Thee Stallion.

It took me a decade, but I found my voice — and I've chosen to become louder.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com