You’re a busy lady—busy hacking the mainframe of a supercomputer! Whether you consider yourself a white-hat hacker, black-hat cracker, or just an airport desk agent who needs to reseat a family of four to Tampa, use these tips to take your mani game from lite to l33t.
Simple No-Chip Clear Coat
When you find yourself frantically clacking out thousands of lines of code on your constantly scrolling black-and-green screen, shaking your head back and forth saying, “Ahhhhh, almost there, almoooost theeere,” and triumphantly shouting, “I’m in!” you need something basic that stands the test. A quick coat of sturdy, clear enamel will strengthen your nails as you change the AOL homepage to Goatse. Hack the planet!!
Classic French Manicure
Keep it on the short side, of course—you don’t want to chip a nail when you’re hammering away at your telecommuting programmer gig. Should cyberterrorists kidnap you, erase your identity, and subsequently ransom your life for a floppy disk, at the very least you’ll look classy. No n00b would have such demure French tips!
Natural Buff
Take a break from your afternoon hacktivism to shine your digits with a buffing block. Really concentrate on smoothing out those ridges. Before you know it, your nails will gleam like the tears of happiness in the eyes of all those laboratory beagles you released with that security system virus. Feel the grass between your toes, boys—freedom has been PWNED!
Nail Art
You don’t see many people on a daily basis; in your last online pizza order, you even asked them to leave ‘em on the porch. With a crippling fear of the outside world hobbling your lonely existence, why not jazz up your tips with a little free-form illustration? Try making tiny faces on each fingertip and naming them. Before you know it, you’ll have a team of friends cheering you on as you steal those Target credit card numbers! r3kt m8!
Short and Bright
Close-trimmed nails could prevent a World War III-sized keystroke error during your “But I’m just a pretty girl, I couldn’t be an undercover computer expert” war games. Opt for an ironic Soviet red to really pop against that grimy, greige Gateway, and let those fingers fly. Take that, “The Enemy!”
Nude Acrylics
Sure, they make typing a bitch, but listen to that rhythmic clickety-clack! This is slightly more appropriate for office work in the customer service realm, but you can rock a long set of pink fills even if you’re tinkering with a new worm, like MyDoom 2.0.
No matter what style you choose, just make sure that your cuticles are neatly trimmed and your hands are well moisturized as you let your fingers fly all over that keyboard. All the other h4x0r2 will be asking: “who DOS your nails?”
