Rows of people sat across from each other at three long rows of tables. Some looked around anxiously; one woman sighed deeply and rubbed her hands together.
Vicki Peters set a timer.
“OK, you guys,” she said. “You have 90 minutes. I want everyone to take a really deep breath. Let the tension out; leave it there.
“You focus on doing the best set of nails you know how to do. Don’t focus on winning.”
She looked around. “You may begin,” she said.
The hiss of nail files filled the air. The competition was on. The best nails would win.
This was the Salon Success nail competition at the Chicago Midwest Beauty Show held last week at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont under the direction of Peters, education and competition director for Nailpro magazine, the competition sponsor. In two divisions, veterans and novices (those who have not yet placed in a competition), competitors were vying for recognition, professional status and cash prizes.
Each had to give a model a set of nails using artificial tips or sculpted nails. One hand was to be finished in red polish; the other was to be a French manicure buffed to a gleaming shine.
They would be scrutinized to a degree that would astonish the humble home nail polisher. Every set of nails would be examined at length, under magnifying glasses, by three judges who would award points in 15 categories ranging from the sharpness of the “smile lines” on the French manicure to the evenness of the nails’ concave and convex curves.
And if the judges’ work was worked out to a science, so were some of the nail strategies. The four top competitors in the country were here, including Tom Bachik, of Murrietta, Calif., who was following a precise handwritten schedule that allotted a specific number of minutes for each step (for the final step, it read, “I win! No, really.”)
He also has learned, he said afterward, not to look at fellow competitors’ work. “You just have to focus,” he said. “You almost block out everyone else. “
It’s not about the money
The air filled with the cloying smell of acrylic. The only sound was the low whine of electric files.
“It’s very nerve-wracking; it doesn’t matter if they’ve competed one time or 20 times,” said Juli Miller, Peters’ assistant. “But they love it. It’s like a drug. As soon as they sit down after this competition, they’re thinking about the next.”
Lorena Marquez, of Watsonville, Calif., one of the four top veteran competitors, dipped a tiny brush into white acrylic. She placed a dab of the cream onto the artificial tip of her model’s nail, then gently tamped it down into a curved shape on top of the tip–an unusual strategy for her. Previously, she had coated her tips with clear acrylic, a less demanding technique.
Competitors work under extreme pressure, said Peters, a matter-of-fact woman with blond pixie hair and no-nonsense white sneakers who runs other competitions around the country and in London, Japan and Germany. “They’re up all night stressing,” she said over a cigarette break. “None of them sleep.”
They judge themselves more harshly than the judges do, she said. “They beat themselves up so badly that it’s almost emotional torture,” she said. “A lot of them fall apart. . . . These are type-A artists.”
The astonished outsider might wonder why people do it. It isn’t for the money. The first prize awards at the Chicago Midwest Beauty Show were $500. Top competitors, who travel with their models, can spend $5,000-$7,000 a year competing.
Competitors say they do it for the personal challenge; for the professional advantages conferred by winning; for the judges’ suggestions for their work; and for the competitive thrill.
Winning brings exposure within the $7-billion-a-year nail industry, Peters said, which can lead to job offers with manufacturers or high-profile careers in celebrity nails. She watched Bachik as he carefully placed a bead of bright red polish in the center of a nail, pushed it forward to the nail bed, then drew it down each side. Bachik and John Hauk, of Dayton, Ohio, who last year accumulated the most points in nail competitions in the U.S., are the industry’s top competitors, followed by Marquez and Rita Horvath, of Boca Raton, Fla.
“It makes you mad; the men are better at it than the women,” Peters said. “They have better hand-eye coordination. And bigger egos.”
“Twenty minutes left,” someone called out.
At the novice table, nerves were fraying. “Oh, my god,” murmured AleeceMcDermott, of Schaumburg, surveying the nails she had just polished red. “They’re still wet.”
“Five minutes remaining,” someone called. Someone accidentally squirted acetone into the air, spraying herself.
“One minute!”
The veterans buffed furiously, their arms flying like concert violinists’.
“OK, competitors, time,” Peters called. Asked to raise their hands to ensure that work stopped, the models responded as if a holdup had just been announced, then lined up for the judging.
Some competitors sat, looking dazed. Others offered post-competition analysis. “I ran behind today,” said Bachik. The room was so cold that the nail products weren’t adhering, he said, and he had failed to follow his own strategy of moving on.
Darlene Feric, a veteran competitor from Antioch, was angry with herself. “I’m dead last, I know,” she said tensely. “I did only one coat of polish, and on the other hand I needed to buff. I ran out of time.”
She tried to figure out where she had gone wrong. “I got enough sleep,” she said. “I didn’t go out last night.”
“Maybe we should have gone out,” suggested her model, Andrea Frederiksen, of Libertyville, who had already been judged.
“We stayed in and practiced in the hotel room,” Feric said.
“We shouldn’t have practiced,” Frederiksen said.
McDermott, a first-time competitor, looked drained. “Those last five minutes put me over the edge,” she said.
Becky Harp, a nail technology student from Phoenix, was on her cell phone, triumphant. “I finished this time!” she crowed. She ended the call, then tried to describe what a nail competition felt like.
“It’s exhilarating, heartbreaking, overwhelming–it follows almost every spectrum of feeling,” she said.
Judging is long and intense
The models, having sat for 90 minutes in the cold convention center–competition spaces are so cold that some competitors bring heating pads for models’ hands–now sat in a curtained area waiting to be judged. The judges sat behind a black curtain so they could not see the models’ faces, which might allow them to identify the competitors. Each model in turn sat on the other side of the curtain and slid her hands under.
The judges rolled fingers back and forth, twisted them into various viewing positions and conferred in whispers. The score sheets filled with their comments: “Bubble.” “Need to clean up cuticles.” “Nice job!”
The judging took about 20 minutes per person. Three and a half hours later, the last model, Erin Zimmerman, a cosmetology student from Normal, was still waiting her turn, stunned.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “I just came up here with our class. Someone came to me at 9:30 and said, `Do you want to get your nails done?’ I had no idea it would take this long.”
She looked down at her one red hand and one French manicured hand. “It’s not like I’m going to wear these around,” she said.
Zimmerman was finally called; the judging was over, and the awarding was about to begin. Peters stood on a stage in front of the crowd of competitors and women with mismatched nails, and announced the results of two days of nail competitions. In the veteran division of Salon Success, the top four had come out on top. Hauk and Horvath had tied, but the head judge later broke the tie, placing Hauk in fourth place and Horvath in third place. Bachik was second. Marqueztook the top prize. When she and model Alma Torres went to the stage, Torres wiped tears from her eyes.
Cyndie Pauza, of Arlington Heights, had placed first among the 24 novices. It had taken her six years of competition to win.
“It’s a little bittersweet,” she said afterward. “That means next year I’ve got to compete with the big guns.”
Lysa Comfort, an international educator for EZ Flow Nail Systems, congratulated Marquez and eyed Torres. “You’re a great model,” she said. “You like to travel? You’ve got a nice nail bed.”
Brandi Sax, a novice competitor from Belleville, Ill., said she was glad she came. She had wanted to meet the big names in the nail industry, and she had.
“You think they’re all superstars,” she said, “but you find out they’re just people, too.”
Peters left her audience with words of encouragement. “All of you can be champions, regardless of your score,” she said. “You may not win, but you did not lose.”
Judges’ criteria
Here are a few of the areas in which nail competitors are judged:
Product control
– Clarity of product
– Color consistency
– Application consistency
– Air bubbles
– Moons
Tip blending and tip fit
– Tip fit on sides
– Is the tip on straight?
– Underside fit
– Glue residue
– Tip blending techniques
Cuticle area
– No cuts on natural cuticles
– Are the cuticles red?
– Application consistency
Tip shape
– Consistency in shape
– Any sharp unfinished edges?
– Filing quality of edges
Polish
– Smoothness of polish application
– Cuticle area
– Tips and sides polished
– Polish residue underneath nails
Balance and harmony
– Do the nails fit the hands?
– Is the nail bed longer than the tip?
– Are nails too long?
Finish work
– Overall appearance
– Clean undersides/no dust
– Edges finished well
– Was enough finish work done?
(Source:) Nailpro
