It’s hard to describe. Turn the fingers of your right hand toward your palm. Move your hand toward your mouth and blow on your fingers while moving them back and forth. Then rub your fingers on your left shoulder, like you’re wiping something off.
I haven’t seen this gesture for ages but I used to see it a lot. If you know what gesture I’m talking about, do you know where it came from? What’s the symbolism? Is it just “I’m so hot (or cool) I have to do something to cool myself down”?
It supposed to look like the person is polishing their nails. When men get manicures, it’s generally a sign of success (something that I think would be more likely to be found in upper class white collar business men). The breathing on them and wiping them on their shirt is supposed to appear that he’s buffing them out a little to keep them nice and clean.
Think of it as the white collar version of pretending to blow the smoke out of a pistol.
To which I would add a little bit of “Im so cool/important that the seemingly big things that are going on are no more important than a nail polish to me. While you’re all rushing about stressed and anxious, I can pause and think about my nails. Aren’t I impressive?”
I’ve always thought that gesture was miming the superstitious practice of blowing on dice and rubbing them on your chest just before thowing them. Like a big shot gambler.
Never occured to me that it had anything to do with polishing nails. Curious to know where you guys got that one.
As for my interpretation, I’ve never heard it anywhere. I just assumed it. In fact, I’ve never before heard anyone speculate about the origin of this gesture.
I agree that it’s a “manicure” gesture. Men’s nails weren’t polished with paint, they were sanded with a very fine emery paper, then polished by buffing. (I have a kit to do this) The shine could be brought back by buffing, as in the gesture, until the nails grew out.
That’s a different gesture. That’s blowing into a closed fist as opposed to just blowing on to the nails. Also, with the dice gesture you are blowing, with the nails gesture you are…errr…doing what you do when you clean glasses Huuuuuu Huuuuu.
I recall the gesture from old movies. I think the idea is you do something with ease, like punching out the other guy, then demonstrate that the only effect on you was a little scuffing of the finger nails.
It means that the task to be accomplished was so easy that the person barely thought about it. They complete the difficult task with ease and then don’t give it a second thought, as if the task was mundane. The nails thing is to simulate boredom.
Imagine if I crashed through the glass ceiling, punched out the bad guys, rescued the princess, then turned to my partner, yawned, and said “I wonder what’s for dinner.”
I always associated it with Chicago Mobsters, and Al Capone specifically. It was the mobile version of the power play where they make you visit while the barber shaves them, and two women work on their hands at either side of the chair. Also, maybe an element of “No dirt on me!”
I’m sure that impression came from an old movie, but I can’t say which one.
Nope. I haven’t seen anyone do it for years but it was common in the 50’s.
Funny how gestures come and go. Another one I haven’t seen for awhile is the twirling index finger, sort of a sarcastic “good for you” or a :rolleyes: equivalent.
It occurs that it is a cleaning up motion, as TruCelt suggests. It’s as though one is preparing to appear in public. Like to receive an award or be the center of attention. “Look at how good I came off looking!”
I’ve also seen it used in reference to having a date with an attractive woman.
My first boyfriend did a similar grooming gesture. He’d lick his forefinger and smooth his eyebrows in an exagerrated way to indicate “Ain’t I sumpin, now.” I always thought it was incredibly corny and suspect he was emulating his grandpa or father.
Another thought: Don’t you wonder about popular gestures? Is there really only one person who does it first and he’s so charismatic that it spreads by imitation?
Or could it be that as manicures became popular for me a few metaphorically minded guys from different parts of the world started making this movement?
Why do some gestures become universal? Certainly there must be a multitude of others which never go viral.
It is still in common use in central NY state, and has been all my life (47 yrs). When I was in college in southern Ohio, in the mid '80s, it was also commonly used there by people from all over the US, for the same purposes.
Here, it means “that was trivial”. Think “for my next trick, I’ll buff my nails”. It only would mean “I’m great” if what you did just before making the gesture was anything but trivial.
Examples:
Someone asks you to open a pickle jar, because they can’t. It means it was trivially easy. In that case, you are also implying that the person who couldn’t open the jar is a wimp.
You jump over a very tall fence, without hurting yourself. It means “I’m great”, because you are implying that the difficult task was actually trivial.
I haven’t the vaguest idea about it’s origin, however. I can only report on it’s meaning and usage local to me.
A Bugs Bunny motif can usually be traced back to a well known (for the era) movie star or character in a contemporary movie. There are a lot of such things in those cartoons that have been lost with time. (Remember, the cartoons were originally intended as an opener to a movie - so it was reasonable to assume a movie savvy audience.) A movie character would also explain a sudden upsurge in the gesture, and later waning of it.
All we need is a classic movie buff or two to tell us from whence it came.
