No H8 Mate.

As an activity, polishing your nails and obsessing over them appears to be a very vain thing. It is something you spend a lot of time on and the thought of damaging a nail can make some women devastated. Let's face it, nail polishing can attract the shallow and the mean, people who place so much importance on how things appear. It took me a long time before I had enough confidence to decorate my nails even though they are not perfect.

I started seeing No H8 posts in my feed when it was no longer the 8th November here. I wanted to add my support to the fact that words across a computer screen can hurt. Text on the screen can not convey the emotion and body language of face to face interactions. This removes our ability to receive and interpret cues for what is being conveyed to us. This barrier also amplifies the distance and impersonality of the other people using the internet.

Most of the time the best course of action is to "walk" away. You do not know if the other person is being a troll and seeking attention or if they genuinely do not realise that they came across negatively.

I used matte polish for the fast drying factor. I would like to take pictures in sunlight to see if the manicure looks better. The base colour is Orly Purple Pleather with two dots of Orly Purple Velvet. Over the top of these two dots and an extra one is Max Factor Fantasy Fire.

Bullying is not funny. It is not cool. It is not right. And more importantly, it is not okay. Most of us are, thankfully, residents of countries that support tolerance and many of our families have settled in these places simply for that reason. Generations later, it is our responsibility to perpetuate that message of tolerance across our new social platforms, including the internet. 

As members of the nail polish blogging community, we all share a love of beauty, color, and lacquer. Other than that, we are remarkably different: from our race to our religion to our hair color...even to our polish application techniques. To marginalize anyone because of those differences is completely unacceptable and today I take a stand against that. I refuse to allow other people's view of "normal" dictate how I behave, believe, and blog. 

In solidarity with a multitude of bloggers linked below, my purple manicure represents my proud commitment to the No H8 movement. Today, November 8, I dedicate my post to ending bullying of any kind and to encouraging diversity and imperfection among our colourful community.