It’s also one of the first strong connections I remember being consciously aware of as a feminine ritual. I can remember my mom getting a box of a set of Amway nail polishes. She picked out an orange color (though I desperately wanted the bright blood red) and painted my nails with it. I can remember the cool feeling of the wet brush as she touched it down on my first index finger nail. There was me before nail polish and me after nail polish. I felt like I had been initiated wordlessly in that moment, accepted into an endless world of making pretty through art.

This all came to me tonight as I was painting my nails with this new Julep color from the Essence Beauty Box called Jess. It is a chocolate brown and it occurs to me that I have painted my nails every type of color you can think of but I have never painted them a chocolate brown. It really does feel like painting my nails with chocolate. Mmmmm! Imagine!?

LOL!

Painting my nails is a ritual that I never felt was foreign to me. The minute my mom painted my nails for the first time that day, I took to it like a duck to water and have never looked back. Sometimes I can barely wait for my next nail polish fix. I’ll do my nails a color I don’t even love just to be doing them. There’s something about the act of doing it that’s almost meditative to me, the whole process. It clears my head. It puts me in a zone. And at the end of it I have pretty, sexy shiny nails.

I know that my inclination towards being “artistic” counts for at least 60 percent of why I love doing my nails. I like to use sparkles and sprinkles on them as much as the primary color. But everything about doing my nails also feels sensual and delicate and beautiful, at least when it’s being done right which is most of the time when I’m doing it for myself. I do like my share of manicures when I have the time and $. I might be one of those rare customers who tends to watch every little thing my manicurist is doing and having paid close attention for years, I know who is really good, who is professional and who is an artist, hopefully all three.

I’m not perfect at it, but I’m pretty darn good. And it’s one of the few things I don’t compete against myself to be good at. I just do it for fun, because it feels good, because shine and colors are pretty and literally therapeutic for me. To me the makeup and cosmetics table at Sephora is a potential artist meet up. I go for the inspiration, transformation and creativity which is at the core of feminine energy.