Hey Sailor, or Why Women Tear Each Other Down

Hello readers! Today I have for you China Glaze's Hey Sailor from this past spring's Anchors Away collection.

This color applied like a dream and required no post-polish touch ups. I love when that happens. It's a true tomato red, like a 40s pin-up girl. In fact, when I wore it, I had a vintage looking dress on and got some good compliments on the retro appeal of the whole look.

But beware...
There was one lady at my office who has achieved relatively high levels of success and has a reputation for woman-on-woman office crime, who saw fit to make a comment about the bright red color. In front of a huge group of our colleagues, she looked at the color and said "that's a very interesting shade of red." And I said "thanks, it's called Hey Sailor!" She replied, "It wasn't a compliment. It's a very specific red. It's red." I was really embarrassed and said "yeah, it's just 40s style." She repeated her take on it two or three additional times to the whole group. Meanwhile, I was too shell-shocked to continue in the conversation.

I really hate women who can't handle being around other women. And this, to me, was just plain tear-her-down-so-I-can-look-better. But, it does bring up a potential issue with this color. It's a bright red, and in the past those had a reputation. Despite the rather pedestrian reputation reds and pinks have for nail polish fanatics, the bold reds (and some hot pinks) still seem to scream "trollop" to some outsiders. And if you work with one of these outsiders, they may publicly humiliate you.

How would you handle a situation like this? Would you have defended your nails stronger, or would you have backed down (like I unfortunately did)? Tell ya what, I'm reticent to even wear a bright red or pink anymore! Boo to girl-on-girl crimes!