I have never been a fan of getting a manicure. The thought of it is nice — pamper yourself, get someone else to do your nails, pick fancy colours and have someone paint it perfectly.
However, my experiences with manicures have never been as good as my fantasy. For some odd reason, I always get hurt. Yes, either they accidentally snip off to much skin and cause me to bleed a little. Or they scrape too hard underneath my nails and cause me a great deal of pain. Either way, I always cringe about manicures.
When my mum came to visit me in HK, she took me to this “awesome place” which turned out to be a nail salon. Anyways, I went in with a skeptic heart. My mum raved on about this great new polish that doesn’t chip or break for weeks — and they’re not fake nails. Hmm…keep going, I’m interested. So I found out it’s Shellac, which is the new craze in the nail industry.
So I try it. What they do is apply a thick coat of polish and then you stick your hands inside this UV light box for 2 minutes. And then they repeat until you get these impeccably shiny polished nails. And your nails dried almost instantly. No chips, no breaks, super shiny.
Wow. I’m impressed. Sound too good to be true?
Well, the sad fact of life is that when things sound too good to be true, they usually are.
What had happened was that a day later, I noticed that my hands got tanner than the rest of me. Awkward. I thought, did my fingers get tanned from the UV light box?? So I checked my mum’s hands and damn, they were looking rather farmer-ish.
So yes, it was definitely too good to be true. I don’t want to be having any cancer fingers** on top of having farmer hands (albeit with nice nails)…
** you can click on that link for an article about UV manicures and cancer.
