The second in an occasional series dedicated to the study of evolutionary psychology as provided by popular magazines and celebrity academics.  Hat-tip to Sarah Anderson for the idea for this chapter.

Why women have long nails

Women love to have long, painted nails.  Some cynics attribute this to socially constructed gender norms that propagate a beauty ideal which includes impractical finger adornments. But it’s more complex than that.

It’s down to the cavemen.

When our ancestors roamed the earth, hunting and gathering, the men would hunt and the women would gather.  (We don’t actually know that, but it seems likely, right?)  And the women who gathered the most were the most sexually successful (we don’t know that bit either), the most likely to eat, and therefore the most likely to pass down their genes to the next generation.  Having long, red nails was evolutionarily advantageous, because not only could a woman spear loads of berries on her long pointy nails, but also, she could confuse the other cavewomen, who would see her glistening red nails and mistake them for berries, slowing them down in their own gathering activities.

And not only that, but when she came home to the cave, she could use her long nails to strip meat from bones, feeding it to her happy hunter husband, thus keeping him satisfied and accordingly faithful to her.  As these traits were passed down through the generations, men predominantly picked women with long, strong nails, and we became genetically programmed to want them.

And that’s how the women came to have long pretty nails.