Who Gets to Decide What Looks Classy?

The latest sign of sophistication, apparently, is a manicure that makes it look as though you have not had a manicure. A recent BBC article describes the fashion for bare-looking nails, which might mean leaving them alone, having them carefully filed and buffed, or paying for an elaborate treatment that produces the appearance of doing very little. The article also reports a more contentious claim: that visible nail art is becoming less “classy” as understated nails are celebrated as a status symbol (Turnbull & Sohal, 2026).

It would be easy to dismiss this as another fashion trend with an unusually short life expectancy. Yet the word “classy” should make us pause. It seems to describe an object or appearance, but it also tells us something about the person making the judgement and the people being judged. Who decided that one way of presenting yourself is tasteful and another is too much? Why does a preference sometimes sound like a rule?

These are sociological questions, and the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu offers a useful way to approach them. His work does not tell us which nails to prefer. It asks how apparently personal preferences become part of the way societies recognise status and draw boundaries between people.

When taste does social work

In Distinction, Bourdieu (1984) argued that taste is shaped by our social circumstances. What we grow up around, what we can afford, the places we spend time and the people whose approval matters to us all influence what feels attractive, ordinary or uncomfortable. We may experience a preference as entirely our own, and it can be genuinely enjoyable, while still having a social history.

He was also interested in what happens when some preferences are treated as better than others. Knowledge of what to wear, how to speak or what to appreciate can function as cultural capital: it is valuable because other people recognise and reward it. Its value depends on the setting. Knowing the conventions of a gallery opening might be useful there; knowing how to present yourself at a job interview might have more immediate consequences elsewhere. Neither form of knowledge is inherently a measure of a person’s worth.

The nail story offers a particularly neat example because the supposedly natural look can require considerable work. One person may have bare nails because they have no interest in manicures or cannot justify the expense. Another may pay for expertly shaped nails and a subtle finish that signals care without announcing the effort. To say that both have chosen the same “look” misses the different resources and meanings behind it. To say that either choice reveals someone’s class would go too far. The interesting question is how an appearance comes to be read, and by whom.

Bourdieu’s account was based substantially on research into French society in an earlier period. We should not lift his map of tastes and paste it onto Britain in 2026. His more useful contribution here is the question he taught us to ask: how does a judgement about taste help distinguish people, especially when that judgement is presented as common sense?

Who gets to call it classy?

Trends change, often precisely because a once distinctive style becomes widely accessible. But trends do not arrive accompanied by a neutral referee. Fashion publications, brands, celebrities, employers and online audiences all help establish which appearances are admired and which are mocked. They do not hold equal influence, and they do not always agree. A look that attracts approval in one group may draw disapproval in another.

This is where Bourdieu’s idea of symbolic power matters. Some people and institutions are better placed to make their descriptions of the world stick. “Elegant”, “natural”, “professional” and “tacky” can sound like simple observations. They are also classifications that give social value to some ways of being and withhold it from others (Bourdieu, 1989).

The BBC article raises a question that makes this more than an argument about rich and poor. It discusses the importance of nail art to Black women and other communities of colour, and reports criticism that celebrating bare nails as tasteful can cast expressive styles as inferior (Turnbull & Sohal, 2026). That criticism deserves attention without assuming that every admirer of understated nails is making a racial judgement. The issue is a pattern of recognition: whose style becomes fashionable when it is adopted elsewhere, and whose version remains open to dismissal?

Class, race and gender can meet in these assessments without becoming interchangeable. Beverley Skeggs (1997) showed how ideas of respectability are bound up with the ways working-class women are judged and with the work involved in managing those judgements. There is no single experience shared by all women, or by everyone who wears nail art. But expectations about appearing suitably feminine, restrained or respectable are not distributed or enforced evenly. A judgement about a manicure can therefore carry more social baggage than its speaker intended.

The consequences of a small judgement

Most remarks about somebody’s nails will have little lasting effect. It would be absurd to suggest that every expression of taste is an act of discrimination. The wider relevance becomes clearer when we notice the same language in places where approval has consequences.

Think of being told that an accent sounds “educated”, that an outfit looks “professional”, or that a particular way of speaking shows “confidence”. Each assessment may be made sincerely, and sometimes there are practical reasons for conventions. Yet the standard can seem obvious to those accustomed to it while remaining largely unspoken to everyone else. Someone may have to spend time, money and effort learning how to look or sound as if they belong. Someone else may be granted that impression before they have done anything at all.

This does not mean every interviewer is consciously sorting applicants by class, nor that appearance tells us enough to establish why any particular decision was made. It means that everyday judgements can shape first impressions and that first impressions can matter. If we want to understand unequal opportunities, it is worth examining the supposedly minor assessments that occur before formal qualifications or abilities are considered.

There is also a limit to an account that treats every judgement as a contest for status. People genuinely like things. A woman might stop getting manicures because she is tired of the cost and the appointments. Another might take pleasure in intricate nail art, whether or not anybody approves. A third might simply prefer the appearance of bare nails. Their choices do not need a sociologist to explain them away. Michèle Lamont’s (1992) work on social boundaries also reminds us that people judge and group one another through more than a single hierarchy of refined taste; moral qualities and other values matter too.

The distinction is between having a preference and assuming that preference measures the person who does not share it. We can enjoy a minimalist look without treating colourful nails as vulgar. We can admire elaborate nail art without assuming bare nails signal conformity or privilege. The sociological interest begins when a preference acquires authority and becomes a standard against which people are ranked.

That is why the BBC article makes a useful gateway into Bourdieu. A fashion story invites a question that extends well beyond fashion. When someone says that an appearance is “classy”, they may feel they are describing only what they see. They may also be drawing on ideas about restraint, effort, money, gender and belonging that they have rarely had cause to examine. We do not have to abandon taste to notice its social life. We might simply become more curious about who gets to define it, and who lives with the judgement.