The bad beauty habit I *finally* broke

How life in lockdown taught me to stop nibbling my nails.

- By Kelsey Haywood Lucas

When I sat down at my laptop to start writing this piece, my right thumb was actively bleeding and my left thumb, recently quite raw, was starting to heal. Both injuries were self-inflicted: I’ve been biting my nails and ripping my cuticles since I was a kid.

And despite the immediate, sharp pain or the dull agony afterward (or the potential embarrassment of bleeding all over myself in public—it’s happened!), it’s unlikely I’ll simply just stop biting.

I’ll wrap preventive bandages around my thumbs to guard them, slap my wrist with a rubber band (I do not recommend this) and try lots of other assorted (often ill-advised) ideas for breaking harmful habits...but I’ll continue to struggle.

Unless I paint my nails.

I’ve been here before, you see, and the answer is easy: Just give me a fresh, professional manicure and I’d immediately morph from a nervous nail-biter into my much more polished, pulled-together persona. With gel on my fingertips, I was unstoppable: Wearing some cool, unexpected color (powdery periwinkle, please!), I’d gesture emphatically with my hands while telling a story or making a point.