Friday's child
October 8, 1999
Tracy and Sunshine are friends. Both of them like magic.
Tracy reads books with magic in - Diana Wynn Jones, Harry
Potter, Paul Strachan - and Sunshine just paints her nails.
As she often says to Tracy, who needs imagination when
there are just so many colours in the Spectacular range
alone? And that's before you get into the finishes, the
shimmers and sparkles and hologram strands, the French
manicure overlays, the undercoats, conditioners and top
coats, the inlays, patterns and appliques. Nail care, it's
a whole life, from the oil you put on at night to the neat
cases of implements for cuticle pruning, the quick-dry
sprays and Q-tips, the coloured balls of cotton wool to put
between toes and the varieties of nail varnish remover:
lotions, pads and a funny little pot you stick one finger
in to twizzle it against a sponge soaked in acetone.
Sunshine has them all, or most of them.
When Tracy comes over to spend the night, they sit up late.
Bewitched, slowly and carefully, like a real lady, Sunshine
does all their nails.
Should the toes be the same colour as the fingers? The
girls dispute this. Tracy feels everything should match,
and at the moment she likes lilac mist with gold sparkles.
But Sunshine keeps her toes restrained, with nearly nude
peach and a French rose overcoat, while she likes to go
wild on her fingers: last Saturday she alternated black
grape and inlaid stars with honey yellow and inset diamante
S shapes.
At 13 years old, they are just exploring the decorative
bits of adult femininity, trying them for size while at the
same time playing with ideas like children. Nails are
perfect: painting your nails has traditionally been a sexy,
even scandalous business, but finger-ends are safely far
away from any overtly erogenous zones. It can still be
dressing up instead of dressing to kill.
Tracy has only just stopped biting her nails. She used to
like being independent of her mother, bearing down with the
nail scissors and a fierce expression, yanking her hand
forward over the wash hand-basin. So she kept chewing off
thin little half-moons, resisting all applications of
bitter aloes and sleep mittens. But she fell in love with
the little satin manicure set her mother got her for her
13th birthday and so she had to grow her nails in order to
have something to trim and buff. (The buffer is so nice
with its suede finger.) The girls pack their manicure sets,
matching make-up bags and brush, comb and mirror sets when
they stay with each other. Their mothers sigh and roll
their eyes - "What are those girls doing?" - but actually
they are pleased.
It's been years since Sunshine and Tracy spoke to a boy. So
when Sunshine's dad teases them and says "Pink to make the
boys wink, eh?" or "That'll put their eyes out," they just
toss their heads and give a disdainful glare. There are
posters of boy bands on their walls, of course, but as for
real boys I well, look at them. So small, so spotty, so
silly.
They are still in their own realm, the realm where possible
and fantastic effortlessly marry, where magic flashes from
fingertips and every girl is a princess. Time enough to
grow up and take notice of the opposite sex. Time enough
not to grow up, too.
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