This month I had actually planned on a beautiful deep red, but I was walking through a hair salon and came across a shade of …pink. I never imagined I would want to wear a shade of pink, but this is not any shade of pink. Strangely enough, it’s a pink that works with my olive skin for once, instead of clashing against it with cool blue undertones. There is a quality of chocolate to it, a hint of warm magenta, and subtle gold shimmer. Here it is in the bottle, with a gold streak:
 |
| sloppy job around cuticles |
It’s almost like a spice chocolate pink, but without any of the offensive blue or plum undertones that make olive skin look bruised/dead/zombified. This is a miracle.
 |
| rosy |
Because I am a terrible photographer of hands, these will never look in pictures like they do in real life. I am glad my period has arrived just as I was beginning to irritably wonder why it was late, as I managed to catch it before it made a mess.
I also found a flowery hairclip thingy.
 |
| flowery hairclip thingy |
It’s a comb to hold a bun in place, but of course I have lots and lots and lots of hair, and it’s virtually useless to me, unless I can find like fifty of them. Anything less and my hair comes tumbling back down around my waist in its full abundance.
the fatal feminist 
"flowery hairclip thingy" ahahahaha
LikeLike
Ooh, beautiful! I love your nails.
LikeLike
Thank you! <3
LikeLike
You know if any other feminist site was posting nail polish pics I'd probably roll my eyes, not because I have any personal hatred of nail polish (just nail polish remover) but because I'd generally thing it was irrelevant to social justice.With the context you've given, though, it makes me think about how almost any act can be an act of rebellion under the right circumstances, the kind of subtle signs of defiance and freedom that are invisible to those outside of specific communities, like my refusal to use person-first language, or just about any reclaimed slur.
LikeLike
LOVE! very beautiful :D It's sort of a warm, golden peachy colour :P gorgeous
LikeLike
So you believe that nail polish acts as a barrier from taking wudu, or you follow this more as a social conformity? I have always seen Wudu as a ritual symbol of purifying oneself, not something that literally purifies us. I have tattoos, if I believed the tale about nail polish, it would also mean I could never be pure because of my tats. Just wondering your thoughts. Social conformity or belief that wudu must literally purify?
LikeLike
Don't tatoos still let water through, though? They absorb into your skin instead of resting on top and creating an impenetrable (by water) barrier like nail polish.I see it as both, physical and symbolical, with of course the symbolical being the deepest and most important of the two–which is why I don't believe nail polish makes *that much* of a difference because it is solely the thinner physical level. So I take off the polish just to be safe, for the little difference that it makes, so that I feel assured that the wudu has been carried to its fullest extent or at least as close as it can be as I perform it as an imperfect person.
LikeLike
@almostclever I have a tattoo too, and I always get shit from people telling me it's haraam because supposedly it's haraam to permanently change your body. Tattoos aren't even really permanent…
LikeLike
How funny, I don't have any tattoos because I fear permanence. =P I always turn over the idea of having one in my head. My friends have suggested those tattoos that fade within days, but somehow that doesn't seem as badass…
LikeLike
Ooh, me likey, Masha'Allah!
LikeLike
I have tattoos from before I converted to Islam, and I was told tattoos and nail polish and makeup and hair products keep one from becoming pure during wudu – yet I am "spared" because I got tattoos before I said shahadda, which I guess means I can still be pure.. Funny how that works.I actually had a tattoo on my lower right arm removed (literally excised, as in scalpel cutting it off of my body, stitches and staples and weeks of healing) shortly after I converted due to this sudden need I had to conform – I still have two other tats and I don't regret removing the first one, but once I started thinking about purity I realized all of it is simply ritual symbolism. What about our bowels, and our bladders – and let's not forget our uterus.. Can we truly purify ourselves during wudu? I think not. But I get the social conformity thing and I also get the importance of symbolism.. I don't wear nail polish because of it. It is just easier to not wear it else the whole mosque turn into a frenzy and sisters begin to lecture me as a "new" convert although I have been Muslim for 5 years now. I just can't wrap my head around it. It has always seemed more like a way to control women (plucking eyebrows, coloring our hair, wearing makeup, wearing nail polish, what clothes to wear in public, hijab, using hairspray that is -gasp!- alcohol based, I could go on). Now I'm just ranting with no real point…. haha… In other words, I know logically there is no such thing as purity – it is in our minds. Yet that doesn't stop me from not wearing nail polish. I do it to conform.
LikeLike
" My friends have suggested those tattoos that fade within days, but somehow that doesn't seem as badass." LOLPlus, some scholars argue that the nail is dead skin, and therefore doesn't affect the wudu'. Haven't looked into tattoos that much though.
LikeLike
Sarah: I actually like that nothing you do before Islam that is considered "impure" counts as a sin. It's considerate and it makes sense.That said, I don't see why everyone would lecture you… good grief, why do people even keep track of who is or isn't a convert? It doesn't matter!
LikeLike
Nahida,"Sarah: I actually like that nothing you do before Islam that is considered "impure" counts as a sin. It's considerate and it makes sense."I like it also, in fact I love that anything I did before converting isn't held against me – although I find it tough to imagine not taking correct wudu is a sin. Ritual purity makes sense symbolically, but believing I am not pure enough to pray because of nail polish or hair gel or tats, and that it is a sin? Yea, sounds a bit like old-time superstition coming through. I place that along the same lines as menstruation and prayer.
LikeLike