It was a sparkly owl that started it. Started it again, really. I was rushing through LAX after a frantic week of work around the 2020 Golden Globes, and I was keeping my eye out for something I could grab as a gift for my daughter, who had recently turned one. I spotted—perhaps because it was designed precisely to flash and twinkle in the light—a wide-eyed little stuffed owl covered in pink sequins, about the size of my palm.
On the plane, with the owl in my hand luggage, I took the liberty of naming him on my daughter’s behalf because she hadn’t yet really got the concept of things having names and also because I wanted to. I had exactly the right name for this shimmering pink flash of infantile wonder and imagination: Killer.
Killer was obviously a Lower East Side glue-sniffing gutter punk, from the time when the Lower East Side had such people. He wore a scratchy hard armor whose hyper-feminine cheap glamour said, “Before you fuck with me, just think about this: Exactly how tough would I have to be to wear this outfit in this neighborhood at this hour?” And it protected a soft inside. I named him after Arthur “Killer” Kane, the sacred bassist of the New York Dolls: a stone-cold lady killer whose look both on and off the stage tended towards sequined boleros, pantyhose, hotpants, lipstick, and glaring nail polish.
The New York Dolls bassist Killer Kane in 1973.
By Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.A few months later, when she got to that age where kids start to name their stuffed animals, my daughter—with no respect for either paternal authority or the legacy of the punk-rock canon— rechristened him. My daughter—whom I regret to say is super basic—named him, counterintuitively from my point of view, Sparkly Owl.
I was sad to lose Killer, who, without his name, became just another face in the crib to me. I don’t mind saying that I had seen a little of myself in that sparkly bastard. But as the old saying goes: When you start to identify with a sequined owl, it’s time to have a chat about it with your therapist.
I don’t need to tell you that men’s nail polish is having a shining moment. Pete Davidson, the preeminent womanizer of his generation, loves a manicure. The dress-wearing sex symbol Harry Styles has just released his own beauty line, called Pleasing, with bauble-like pearlescent polishes. Earlier this month, Machine Gun Kelly turned up to the launch party for his polish range UN/DN LAQR with girlfriend Megan Fox, their pinky nails attached by a tiny chain; after swiftly selling out, the collection dropped a restock this week. And Tyler, the Creator’s trio of lacquers, under his label Golf le Fleur, arrive December 13.
From left: Tyler, the Creator, matching his nails to his valise. Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox at the UN/DN LAQR launch party.
By Jerritt Clark/Getty Images, Paul R. Giunta/FilmMagic.To be entirely clear, there is nothing new or interesting about straight men wearing nail polish. In fact, it’s possible that it only became gendered in the first place due to a twist of marketing: In the 1930s, when Rimmel came up with the colored lacquer we think of as modern-day nail polish, the company pitched it to American women to tap into a surging demand for cosmetics. As far as men were concerned, it was a glossy red line in the sand.
David Bowie’s glossy nails on the set of The 1980 Floor Show, filmed in 1973.
From Getty Images.But polish slowly crept onto the gentleman’s fingertip. One-man cultural renovator David Bowie liked to paint a finger or two in the early ’70s. Then, as he had a habit of doing, he breached the taboo on national television when he wore a lovely set of long, pearlescent whites for his final performance as Ziggy Stardust in The 1980 Floor Show, which aired on NBC in 1973. Around the same time, Bowie’s pals the New York Dolls (including Killer Kane) were pairing bright red nails with torn fishnets as part of their shock-and-awe campaign to conquer the intergalactic megasphere. Boys in the new, semiotically nihilist punk scene were wearing nail polish as part of their off-handed attempt to render everything from sexuality to Swastikas entirely meaningless. According to the punk-rock history book Please Kill Me, it was also a way of appearing sufficiently outré to be allowed into the back room of Max’s Kansas City—the Dolls’ clubhouse and the nexus of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene and the CBGB kids. (Max’s mainstay Lou Reed, who probably wouldn’t have much trouble getting a table anyway, was an early adopter of black nails among the rock-star crowd, as was Stephen Tyler of Aerosmith.)