The manicurist's disappointment was unmistakable. When I said I wanted my nails trimmed, buffed, and left completely bare, she could barely mask her disinterest. She spent the rest of the appointment eyeing clients getting what she apparently considered "actual" manicures, and I left feeling like I'd wasted her time. That exchange, frustrating as it was, reflects a pattern many Muslim women know all too well.
For generations, Muslim women have maintained bare nails not as a beauty choice but as a religious practice. During the five daily prayers, Muslims perform ablution, a ritual cleansing called wudhu that involves washing the hands and ensuring water reaches the nail beds. Traditional nail polish creates a barrier that prevents this water from reaching the nails, which invalidates the ablution. For many Muslim women, this meant nail polish was reserved only for menstruation, when prayer is not performed. Some would spend money getting their nails painted at a salon only to remove the polish a week later.
What once felt like an obligation within a small community suddenly entered the mainstream lexicon this year when bare nails were crowned the latest beauty trend. They were rebranded as "quiet luxury," as "the naked manicure," as "your nails but better." Glossy magazines and influencers declared natural-looking nails the height of sophistication and understated elegance. For Muslim women who had been living with bare nails all along, the whiplash was real.
The irony stung. There was a time when skipping polish at a salon appointment meant looking behind the times, not ahead of them. Ambreen, 33, articulates the frustration clearly: "It feels like anything white women do is allowed to become a trend, but when it's Muslim women, it's framed as oppression." She continues, "Even if it's something Muslim women did first, it always takes the Western world adopting a beauty ritual for it to be seen as acceptable."
Saimah, 30, who maintains bare nails for both religious and professional reasons in the medical field, experienced pressure from nail technicians to at least apply nude gel polish. "It simply isn't an option for me," she says. "But it really takes away from the experience to feel like you're constantly being convinced a nude gel is the better route."
The turning point came with advances in nail technology. In recent years, breathable and permeable nail polishes have emerged that allow water to pass through, making them permissible according to some Islamic scholars. This opened new possibilities for Muslim women who wanted salon care without compromising their religious practice. Standard gel, acrylic, and shellac polishes remain barriers to water, but these new options provided an alternative.
As the bare nail trend gained momentum, salons began expanding their menus to include treatments specifically designed for natural nails. Celebrity manicurist Iram Shelton says the trend has actually sharpened her craft: "I love working on bare nail manicures. The trend has made me so much better at the fundamentals like shaping, buffing, and cuticle work because that takes center stage when there's nothing else to distract from it."
Ambreen booked her first salon appointment in years once she realized she could get a manicure that left her nails healthy and prayer-ready. "Knowing I can invest in a manicure that leaves my nails looking and feeling healthy, without compromising on the conditions required for prayer, is a really great beauty maintenance option," she explains.
Yet there's a catch. Most of what's being marketed as bare nails is not actually bare at all. Luxury manicurist Megan Margot Evans reports that a high percentage of her clients still opt for gel manicures every three weeks. What salons are increasingly selling as "bare" or "natural" nails is actually a glazed look achieved with ultra-glossy top coats designed to mimic the appearance of untreated nails. The aesthetic of bare nails has become trendy, but the reality of actually wearing them remains less common than Instagram suggests.
New options have emerged for Muslim women seeking legitimate nail care. The Japanese manicure, which uses cleansing, shaping, and buffing followed by a paste and powder treatment with ingredients like beeswax and keratin, delivers shine and health without any polish. Glass nail buffing, another option, uses a tempered glass tool to create a high-shine finish that mimics a glossy top coat while remaining completely breathable.
What's frustrating is that this acceptance arrives decades too late for the Muslim women who have been doing this all along. The same beauty industry that once made bare nails feel like a deficiency now celebrates them as sophisticated. The majority of inspiration images flooding Instagram and Pinterest feature white hands, not the hands of the women who pioneered this look out of necessity, not choice.
Muslim women have worn their nails bare for generations as part of their spiritual and religious identity. Now that it's fashionable, the conversation has shifted, but the credit rarely goes where it's due.
Author Jessica Williams: "It's telling that Muslim women needed Western beauty culture to validate what they've been doing for centuries before anyone noticed it was worth doing at all."
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