Over lunch recently, a friend casually mentioned that her nails hurt when they’re bare: “They just don’t feel right without gel polish on them,” she told me. “It’s like they ache.”
At first, I brushed it off, but then I remembered how alien my own nails felt after getting my builder gel removed a few weeks before. I couldn’t wash my hair, type, or use my phone without wincing. It wasn’t just that my nails were naked; they felt exposed. It got me thinking — have we become too reliant on gel polish to the point where our nails don’t feel like our nails without it?
A quick Google search confirms that my friend and I aren’t alone in experiencing this strange sensation. TikTok user Melodee Rose Miller describes her bare nails as feeling “so disgusting” after removing polish, while Sincerely Her jokes that undone nails make her feel “sick to her stomach”. Meanwhile, in the r/RedditLacqueristas thread on Reddit, one user asks why their nails feel sore without polish — sparking a handful of comments from people who totally get it.
