Noah Kolenda – Torch Alumnus
I’ve worn acrylic for years—usually so brightly colored they could be seen from space, long enough that I need help at ATMs and sharp enough that taking out my contact lenses is quite the precarious task—because of the immense joy I’m brought every time I look down at my hands. They offer me a place to showcase my personality without needing to dress to the nines or return to an era of unnaturally colored hair, but most importantly, they offer me a canvas to express my identity without screaming it from the rooftop.
While I’m not against the male part of my identity, masculinity has always felt like a box for myself that I never fully fit into—though I never really stopped feeling the crushing weight of its expectations and how it dragged on my expression of my identity. Whether it be the people around me, the influences of media—both social and traditional—or just my own perception of what it meant to present masculinity, having nails that didn’t fit into that box allowed me distance to buck those expectations and signal who I was. It was something for me. They offer me a step off the binary while being something I get to dial up or down every two weeks at the nail salon.But the negotiation between identity and expectation isn’t one I came to first, or alone—and neither is the instinct to work it out on my hands.
Long before my first ever set of acrylics, femme queer women were working it out on their hands. Navigating a world that didn’t read their presentation of their identity as queer—their femininity mistaken for straightness, their queerness invisible in the spaces where they most needed to be seen—they turned to something small. In the early 2010s, a practice taking cues from the 1970s-era hanky code, called femme-flagging emerged: painting one or two nails a different color, a quiet signal legible to those who knew to look. It wasn’t a manifesto, it was just a way of saying I’m here to anyone paying attention—just like they do for me.
My nails change with the season, the occasion, the mood. Come December, mine look like tree ornaments or a snowstorm. Come summer, they’re long and neon. I’ve worn my schools’ colors, sported the colors of the Torch, matched events I was proud to be a part of or used them to show off who I was at pride. Then there are weeks where I keep classic and quiet—something that adds to a dressed look at a work function without asking for attention. The range is the point. Most men leave this on the table, not because they can’t wear them or dress them up, but because nobody told them it was there for the taking.
The femmes who figured out finger-flagging weren’t just finding each other. They were quietly expanding how nails could be used and who they could be for. Thanks to them, and countless others who wore their identity on their hands before it was easy, there’s a little more room at the table. Pull up a chair. Grab a bottle of polish and enjoy yourself.