A long nail painted red strokes the stem of a wine glass. The dry click of typing, a fingertip circling the rim of a coffee cup, the hard touch of a nail brushing the cheek when she rests her chin on her hand. The nail is the most distal part of the human body and one of its most decorative. The delicacy of the bare, transparent nail and the splendour of decorated nail art each hold their own aesthetic, and on that small surface era, class, and occupation are reflected. Tsume fetish (爪フェチ; English nail fetish, onychophilia) is the general term for a taste that makes a woman’s nails, fingertips, and nail art an object of sexual arousal.

Etymology and definition

“Nail fetish” (tsume fetish), “nail-art fetish” (neiru fetish), and “fingertip fetish” are used in parallel, and in the trade “tsume fetish” and “neiru fetish” are used almost equivalently. The English onychophilia derives from Greek onyx (nail) + -philia (love), a scholarly term. In the narrow sense it denotes a taste for the nail itself; in the broad sense it covers the whole fingertip, nail art, nail care (manicure, pedicure), caress using the nails, and the act of digging in with the nails.

History

The decoration and beautification of nails has existed in every culture since antiquity; in pharaonic Egypt there was a custom of dyeing the nails with henna. In ancient China, growing the nails itself became a status marker of the aristocratic class that did not labour, and at the end of the Qing dynasty the custom of wearing metal nail-guards (zhijia tao) spread among high-ranking women. Long nails took on a class and sexual sign-value as proof of the inability to labour, that is, of the leisured class.

Modern Western manicure culture began in France at the end of the nineteenth century and became popular in the United States in the mid-twentieth. Revlon appeared in 1932 and positioned nail enamel as a standard female cosmetic alongside lipstick. From the 1970s, with the technical development of artificial nails, sculpture, and gel nails, the nail changed from “a short object of care” to “a long object of decoration.” In Japan, nail-salon culture spread explosively from the late 1990s into the 2000s, and nail art became an everyday matter centred on the young generation. Nail fetish in adult expression came to be recognised as a genre from the 2000s onward, in parallel with the penetration of gel-nail culture.

The structure of the taste

There are four elements in which the nail occupies a taste-position different from other body parts. The first is “decorability”: it is the only “natural body part” whose colour and form one can deliberately change oneself, and the very choice of decoration expresses character, class, and occupation. The second is “the boundary of hard and soft skin”: the nail is one of the hardest parts of the human body, and adjacent to it is the softest pad of the finger, so the contrast of hardness and softness holds over a short distance. The third is “instrumentality of contact”: the nail becomes a tool of active contact, stroking, scratching, pressing, pinching the body, and within nail-fetish taste there is the passive form of “wanting to be touched with nails” and “wanting to be scratched with nails.” The fourth is “frequency of being seen”: the hand is a part constantly in view during conversation, eating, and labour, and the nail functions as an object of observation for almost all that time.

As derivatives there are a “nail-art taste” drawn to the decorativeness of nail art itself, and a “bare-nail taste” drawn to the shape, length, and natural care of the nail regardless of decoration. The former sometimes takes on a cosplay colour, and the latter approaches a hand fetish.

Derivative forms

• Long nails: nails grown to 1 cm or more
• Nail art: the decorative line
• French nails: the traditional style with a white edge
• Gel nails: the current mainstream technique
• Short nails / bare nails: the orientation toward a healthy hand
• Digging in with the nails: the active-contact line
• Pedicure (toenails): intersection with the foot fetish
• Scratching with the nails: contact on the back and elsewhere
• Black nails / pointed nails: the Gothic and SM line

Cultural references

Nail art is a cultural field established since the twenty-first century as a venue for women’s self-expression, and the nailist (a private qualification, not a national one) has taken root as a professional alongside the licensed hairdresser. The Japanese nail-art market has held a certain scale since the 2010s, and the techniques of gel nails and sculpture are evaluated as world-class.

In commercial adult video, nail-fetish-only works stay limited to production by enthusiast-oriented labels; in general works the form in which the nail is included as an object within hand-fetish and foot-fetish works is the main one. On SNS, communities of enthusiasts with dedicated “nail” accounts have formed, sharing a boundary with a culture that observes the process of nail care not sexually but aesthetically. In the Asian sphere, the long-nail culture of China is still alive today, and an independent fetish community exists.

See also

• Foot fetish — connection with a taste for the toenails
• Armpit fetish — a body-part fetish of the same kind
• Navel fetish — a body-part fetish of the same kind
• Hair fetish — a body-part fetish of the same kind
• Smell fetish — a sensory fetish of the same kind
• Clothed play — connection with a contact-oriented taste