Coffee And Swears: Femme flagging
I just painted my nails—well, apparently it’s the color for dirty talk, according to this, which, fair enough, but really I just put the color on because a friend gave it to me yesterday and I like it. Anyway, it struck me that one thing about the hanky code that’s different from nail polish-based femme flagging is that you can stop flagging if you start feeling awkward or uncomfortable by just removing whatever you’re flagging with, and you can do that out in public, if you want, but nail polish is harder to quickly change, conceal or remove if you change your mind.
I have some friends who don’t really know anything about the queer community who paint their nails with, for example, flowers on the ring finger, but they’re definitely not flagging. How do you signify intentionally flagging as opposed to just putting designs on your nails because you like them?
I think it would be easier, especially for people who aren’t in a position to buy a bunch of nail polish colors, to settle on a flag for mutually-assured queerness with some kind of approach/do not approach variation based on patterns or which nails are painted instead of by color. Because nail polish is expensive.
I’m saying this because I’m really hellishly shy and really fond of blue nail polish, but if somebody came up to me out of nowhere and was all “Oh, REAlly?!” I would freak out. Visibility is important to me, but so is being able to stop being visible when I’m having a do-not-engage day.