// BBC HEALTH NEWS — SALUTE
How the bare nails trend became a class issue
In recent months, Paloma Buddemeier has watched a stream of people walk into her nail salon with the goal of looking as if they'd never been there at all.
"It's crazy," the owner of Wumman Spa in London says.
These customers still get their nails filed, buffed, and trimmed. "You still do the cuticle, you do the soaking and hydrate everything," says Buddemeier, "but you just put no polish on."
Driving this, she says, is a viral craze for bare-looking nails.
In recent months, artsy shots of glossy naked nails have been flooding social media and taking over fashion runways and red carpets, which some are viewing as the latest symbol of "quiet luxury".
But critics argue the bare nails trend actually says something about class, the hamster wheel of beauty standards, and who gets to define what is considered tasteful.
Paloma Buddemeier has seen a shift in what customers are looking for at her London nail salon
Nail art's historical and creative roots are linked back to black, Latino, and Asian communities and the suggestion that bare nails are now a sign of high status could stigmatise bold manicures, they say.
"That trend really promotes blankness and this kind of sameness and erasure of culture and identity that is so important to black and brown communities," beauty journalist Kristina Rodulfo tells the BBC.
"They are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty."