Competition-nails, not what we usually do.

As I promised, in a previous post, I will comment some of Marians articles. There were an article about Nailympics here. I really liked the article, and I agree with mostly everything.

One of the comment I hear, very often, is: "Competitions are not about the real world, it is not what we usually do at the salon!. I am not a competitor, I do REAL work!" Sometimes I feel like some people like to think that competitors can ONLY do competition-nails. (This is not Marians view, but in general). Strange, as most of the competitors I know are salon-owners and/or very success-full nailtechs!

I do NOT make very long, un-natural nails at the salon. BUT I do make all my cuticle-areas flush, I have to be a steady polisher, I have to make all 10 nails the same lenght and form, I need filing-control and I need product-control. I am very sure that my salon work has improved after I started competing.

Marian said she wanted to see more salon-nails in competitions. I fully agree with that. What I have seen, at many competitions, is that they have increased in nail-art, but still only have one competition-nails and one salon-nails. At some competitions I feel the whole competition is mostly about nail-art! I wished they could introduce more categories in salon nails. What about:

Do your own nail, one hand.
Do a nail-biter - a kind of make-over.
Do natural nail overlay
Do a reballance
Maybe they could divide the salon nails into a square and an oval category?

I don't know how this could have been done practically, but I am sure it would be "do-able".

Another point is that competitions are very different from country to country and from continent to continent. In UK they have begun with salon-nails competitions. I really like that those competitions are *real* salon-nails. In the US they already have salon-style category, but those are very similar to the European competition-standard. The US competition-standard is waaaaayyy too long, in my opinion....

I wished there were an international standard for competitions and I wished there were an international judging certification with universal rules. This industry is very small so it shouldn't be that difficult to do this? Or???