Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and the host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126. If you like what you're about to hear, go ahead and give us five stars and then tell everybody that you know. And if you don't like it, just, child, keep it to yourself and pray our strength. Okay? Thank you so much.

Also, don't forget to check out my YouTube page, Lurie Daniel Favor's Media, where you should subscribe, like, and share, because then you'll get notified when I post videos from my show, which I do just about every single day and when I go live with my YouTube audience. So I have a nail appointment later today. I'm very excited about it. It's a part of my self-care and it's something that, you know, I like to beautify as much as anybody else. And yet,

despite that fact, I'm also pretty conscious about how I do so because, frankly, there's a lot

of chemicals in some of these products. And for years, I used to get acrylic tips. And I loved

me some acrylics, child. It really tapped into my

door knocker earring sort of stereotype what a black woman was supposed to look like. Well, I guess

at that point more what a black girl was supposed to look like. But again, I stopped many, many

years ago because a lot of the chemicals in the acrylic nail products just, I didn't like the

smell and I kept learning about the ways in which these

products were not, frankly, just very unhealthy. And so I shifted many years ago. We're going back

before the pandemic now. I then shifted to gel nails. Number one, they dry super fast. They last

super long. They're gorgeous. They look absolutely amazing. And even though I wasn't really happy with how the gel nails would leave my nail beds when the polish chipped off, I really appreciated this style of manicure. Now, to be honest, I did worry a little bit about the UV light. For any of you who have ever gone to a salon and you've gotten a gel nail set and you've gotten a gel manicure, you know that part of the

process of the gel manicure requires you to stick your hands in the UV light device. And there's

something about that UV light that corresponds with the chemicals and the gel nail products that

basically makes it super, super hard, makes them super, super shiny and honey,

super, super, super gorgeous. But I was concerned about the UV light because of my previously

mentioned affiliation for health, right? So I am one of those black women who actually

listen to black dermatologists who tell us to wear things like sunscreen, right? And so thinking

about the UV lights in that little

device that I was sticking my hands in about every two and a half weeks or so to beautify myself,

it was, you know, it's something in the back of my mind, but I really liked the look of the nails.

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