Cherished [Marilyn remix] by Anthony Austin

Red nail polish. Dangerous.

This girl I hang out with sometimes wears shiny red nail polish. The problem is that popular culture, rightly or wrongly, has made its own judgements about red nail polish. Judgements of which she is blissfully unaware of and from which she may never escape.

For instance, the Marilyn Monroe red nail polish association. Red nail polish = red lipstick = Marilyn, therefore red nail polish = you are half way to imitating Marilyn.

So this means that despite the bikie rings, her make-up, hair colour, whatever…this girl gets a nail-judgement tarring with no avenue of appeal. This girl, a beloved friend with a large horizon of character and warmth. All of this will be side-swiped by the red nail Marilyn tsunami effect. All the goodness she holds within, now clouded by visual association with a ticky-tacky Hollywood horror story.

Friends, however demand loyalty. Unconditionally. The way she smiles to herself when she applies it. She loves that red nail polish and there’s no way I can tell her the brutish truth about…you know.. the M word.

So I guess some smiles are worth preserving.

The Marilyn remix by Anthony Austin is licensed under a CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia licence. It is a derivative work of Emily Maguire’s CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia licensed story. The original is available at http://www.remixmylit.com/storiesremixes/emilymaguire/. For details on how you can reuse the original and this remix see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/.