As the years go by, it seems like nail art keeps getting more and more elaborate. At first, people were interested in fun and relatively simple designs added onto their color, but then things got more complicated with options like marble nail art, ombre tips, and even nails featuring pom-poms. Now, things are just getting weird: a woman recently gave herself a live ant manicure, and people are incredibly upset. Because, let’s say that one more time: she used live ants IN her manicure. That’s a DIY tip you’ll probably never see on Pinterest!
The woman is a nail artist at Nail Sunny, a Russian nail salon that has been behind some of the wildest manicure trends we’ve seen recently — they’re behind viral manis like colored pencil nails and chocolate nails. While the manicures they show off on Instagram are usually just plain strange or uncomfortable-looking, their latest design, the ant manicure, seems downright cruel.
Last week, the salon posted a video to Instagram that showed living ants being sealed into a set of clear nails. In the video, you can actually see the ants trying to crawl around in the nail space. Ants might be very annoying, but this is just disturbing.
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The nail artist started by applying a set of fake nails, then added a plastic layer that’s curved on the top and flat on the bottom, with a small opening. The artist inserted the ants in there with a pair of tweezers, then sealed them to create little finger ant farms. Not cool.
This was one manicure that definitely got a lot of attention, but this time, people were more angry than weirded out. Social media was full of furious reactions from people who called it a cruel publicity stunt.
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A lot of people were just confused on why the manicure ever happened in the first place.
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The backlash was so intense that the salon posted another video claiming that they “let the ants breathe.”
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Still, people are perturbed. And unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Nail Sunny has used bugs in one of their manicures. One video posted in July shows them using some sort of flying bug (maybe a mosquito?) in a similar way. The only difference is that it seems like these were already dead:
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Even so, you have to wonder… uh, why? Is it really necessary to put bugs in your nails for a manicure? We definitely don’t think so.