Darwin and The Nail Varnish 

By 

Tony Philpott

Saturday evening my wife came into the bathroom and held up the backs of her hands to me. “Which?”, was all she said.

Superficially I was being asked to chose which colour nail varnish looked best, the one on her right hand or her left. I say “superficially” because after many years of marriage I know that I was not really being asked to make a choice - but to endorse her preference.  And therein lies the trap.

How to endorse  - when you not only don’t know what’s preferred  - but the difference between the two shades of nail-varnish is so subtle as to be indiscernible to the naked masculine eye?

Colour perception and the ability to see fine detail are superior female faculties upon which the very continuity of the entire human species once depended. It was also an evolutionary trait which presumed just one thing -  men are mostly failures.

The classic depiction of the cave-man dragging the carcass of a slain elk back to the cave is an enduring man-the-hunter motif.

But the conversion of a forty mile an hour elk into a venison pot-roast by a male Cro Magnon was an extremely rare event. Had  human survival depended on a male ability to hunt - we would be extinct and the dominant species would now perhaps be a semi-intelligent hamster - but enough about politicians. So, while our ancestral male was busy trying to be man-the-hunter, prehistoric females were quietly developing skills to help compensate for man-the-failure.

Nuts, berries, mushrooms. These were the nutrients prehistoric females gathered. All very sedentary when compared to the vigour of hunting, but, pick the wrong berry or mushroom and you and your hairy family would die a toxic death and become a source of dietary fibre for the  next scavenger to pass by.

A half shade of purple could determine the difference between a juicy blackcurrant and some poisonous mimic, the female ability to spot a variant shade of beige is a critical visual skill that often meant the difference between life or death – and you can see the self-same skill being used by women in Dunnes Stores or on Moore Street on any given day.

Watch a woman shopping for clothes. Witness the sheer intensity of the event. The scrutiny of the garment, the holding it up, the holding it away, the putting it back on the rack, the taking it off again. All pre-programmed female behaviour, an evolutionary echo of the need to make the right choice, it is as predetermined as a man’s genetic inability to ask for directions or to actually finish putting up tiles in the bathroom.

But back to my wife and the nail varnish. I’m sure there was a colour difference, but my testosterone-impaired vision just couldn’t let me see it. So, if my wife’s superior eyesight has already been accounted for as a valuable evolutionary trait, then how do I account for her soliciting my opinion while depriving me of the knowledge that she has already chosen to paint her nails with Vermilion Sunset and not Crimson Nights?

Sorry lads, even Darwin couldn’t explain that one.