All nail care guides advise this but how the hell do you accomplish it?
Using clippers, which are slightly convex, you can’t cut your nail straight. Try it! It literally is impossible, MAYBE you could use some odd flat scissors but your nails would have to be really long and then the corners would be stabby and sharp.
Trying to cut my toenails straight as possible usually just leads to them breaking off in a circle moon shape anyway.
What they’re trying to say is not that they should look as if they’ve been cut using a laser beam, but that you shouldn’t “trim as you cut, trying to achieve the final desired shape straightaway”. What you get with the nail clippers in a single chop is fine, you’re supposed to file the result to the desired shape; even if you cut, trim and file (which the people writing for magazines don’t like and manicurists don’t do), the first cut should leave enough extra material for the additional shaping.
Next question - why on earth shouldn’t you trim round?
I’ve never used a nail file in my life - just the feel of those things give me the squicky down-the-blackboard shivers. My nails seem fine. I guess I could get them looking more regular if I put in the effort but…that’s a big if.
Then why don’t they say that? There’s no way I would interpret “cut your nails straight across” to mean “shape your nails round using a file”. They don’t say the same thing at all. It really does sound as if they’re saying “cut your nails laser-beam straight across.”
And you should still file after trimming. I’ve heard that you should file in one direction only. That seems especially worthwhile if you want a straight tip. I prefer a rounded profile, and I run the file back and forth in both directions.
the cutting straight across advice is because people trim the ‘corners’ too tight and then they might have a tendency to become ingrown. use a scissor action nail clipper (they will look more like a pair of diagonal wire cutting pliers or a dog claw clipper) and trim the corners rounded but not close (leave white).
OK, number one, every cite I’ve found that mentions cutting your nails straight across says nothing about the importance of filing versus clipping, and seem to imply that it is in fact the *shape *that is important:
Number two and more important, there are podiatrists who say that cutting your nails straight across doesn’t really have much to do with avoiding an ingrown toenail anyway.
Which totally makes sense. Feet vary a whole lot from person to person and what works best for one person would be completely wrong for someone else. I’ve fortunately never had an ingrown toenail myself, but if I did it would be absurd for me to try to cut my nails straight across. My big toe nail beds are so curved, so wide and end so close to the end of my toe that the corners would be hanging out over the sides of my toe if I tried to trim them straight across. The very idea of growing them that long gives me the jibblies.
here’s a pair of straight across toenail clippers. I’ve bought four pairs so far for myself, my husband, and for two of my neighbors! They work very well.
I also file off the corners of my nails. If I left them square, it would be bizarre.
Here’s what’s confusing to me. The tips/fake nail industry was grown to fill the needs of people who could not grow long nails, to enjoy the look of them. Cool, no worries, to each their own, etc.
But they are not cheap to maintain, and somewhere along the line the standard shifted to having them appear to be anything but natural looking. Not sure why exactly, to be honest. I can only assume it was to ‘announce’ they were expensive salon bought nails!
Such that these days the easiest way to spot fake/salon done tips is to look for the squared, blunt cut. Dead giveaway. If you trim real fingernails that way it will weaken them, I believe, but not so with thick, fake tips. They are unlike real fingernails in thickness as well, so can stand up to the squared cut.
And now it’s come full circle wherein people with actual real fingernails seek to duplicate the fake ness of nail tips, so as to appear affluent enough to maintain nail tips which includes regular and costly trips to the salon.
What a long strange trip affectation is, don’t you think? Originally meant to perfectly mimic real nails. Cut into a unique shape to insure they draw attention and announce their fake ness. Only to become so pervasive as to be mimicked by those with real nails. At least that is what I see from where I sit, just my opinion.
See also: bra shape. Bras have now been shaped to make unnaturally high, round breasts, so that even natural breasts appear similar to breast implants.
But the nail cutting thing really is supposed to be a medical thing; a way to reduce ingrown toenails. The straight across advice I’ve always heard in relation to toenails, not fingernails - straight across on fingernails are indeed simply fashion.
(And, like other posters, I think it’s uselessly generic as a recommendation. I’m very prone to ingrown toenails when they’re cut straight, and the best way for me to avoid them is to have them cut shorter than recommended and rounded at the corners with a file.)