We Need More Nail Art in Women's Sports
Beauty in sports has long been trivialized, but some of our favorite athletes — and their nails — are breaking the mold.
Self-expression can be hard when you’re playing a sport, especially when that sport makes you a small part of a gigantic team effort. Matching uniforms, in many cases from head to toe, make it nearly impossible to infuse a bit of yourself into your gameday look. Somehow, our favorite athletes seem to find a way to stand out. It’s usually through bold hairstyles and small customizations to the uniform that make it their own. One way athletes are bringing their personal style to the pitch and beyond is through their nails.
Nail art is having a moment right now, with polka dots, stripes, cat-eye polish and intricate designs flooding Instagram Explore pages and Pinterest moodboards. For the most fashionably-minded athletes, funky nails are one of the few ways they keep things fresh on the field. In sports like basketball, long acrylics and 3D designs might not be the most functional option, but for most athletes, it’s the only one.
Trinity Rodman, Reilyn Turner, Simone Biles and more have been known to sport acrylic nails in different shapes, lengths and colors. For things so small, they do tend to stand out on the big screen, drawing extra attention to Rodman as she spins her way down the soccer field, or Biles as her arms and legs fly through the air on the uneven bars and beam.
If we’re talking about athletes and nails, we have to start with the blueprint, though. Florence Griffith Joyner is one of the first names that comes to mind when people think of sports and nail art. Once the fastest woman on earth and forever an icon of the track, she and her nails became almost synonymous in the ’80s.
Flo-Jo was one of the first athletes to rock long acrylic nails, proving they weren’t a hindrance to performance but a necessary accessory made for elevating gold-medal photoshoots and flying down the rubber of the track. With nails so long they curved, she set so many of the nail trends we see today decades before they became monthly rituals.
There has always been the notion that beauty and sports don’t mix, but Griffith Joyner attempted to break down that wall between the two. Today, Sha’Carri Richardson is carrying on her legacy on the track. Another American generational talent, Richardson’s track-and-field aesthetic has both many admirers and many haters. Some say her colorful hair and bold nail designs are a distraction or “too much” for the sport, but it’s a modern take on what Griffith Joyner started all those years ago.
Richardson’s acrylics are long, loud and captivating, with different shapes, colors and patterns on each nail. At the 2024 Olympics in Paris, she had multiple sets of acrylics, with her nails seeming to change every few days and capturing the attention of the media just as much as her medal-winning performances did. Though Richardson is doing it best right now, she’s not the only athlete leading the nail art charge.
Gymnast and Olympic medalist Jordan Chiles is known for her nail designs, sporting trendy styles on the floor as she competes. On the tennis court, Coco Gauff regularly matches her nails to her New Balance kits, picking out key colors, motifs and tennis ball designs to guide her serves through every Grand Slam.
Yes, athletes are fueling our sporty nail art fantasy regularly, but we still yearn for more. A few big names here and there don’t feel like enough, especially when women’s sports are growing at an exponential rate worldwide. It seems as though the idea that nail art and beauty in women’s sports is still viewed as trivial and unserious. In a world where female athletes are still fighting to be taken seriously, it’s no wonder most shy away from the attention that comes with long acrylics or bright, abstract artwork.
Athletes who wear makeup, acrylics and hairstyles that are deemed “over-the-top” are disproportionately ridiculed for hobbies and trends that the average woman regularly partakes in without issue. Society holds athletes to a different, impossible standard, projecting the values and expectations of male athletes on women in sports. The rigidity and conservative nature of men’s sports don’t fit the mold of the inclusive, fast-growing culture that different women’s leagues are building. It’s time to break free from the confines of men’s sports, and nail art might be the perfect way to do that.
Despite these sentiments that still need to be unpacked and unlearned, things are looking up. New York-based nail artist Nika Belilovsky’s work with NWSL side Gotham FC has seen her go from curating press-ons and nail art for stadium pop-ups to designing special gameday nails for goalkeeper Teagan Wy.
There’s a market for nail art in women’s sports, and with a new generation of athletes coming through the ranks, we might just see it more and more. There are still only a handful of athletes getting spots on our nail appointment moodboard, but give it a few more years — sports might become your nail tech’s new obsession.
