Style

How A Girl Nicknamed 'Ham Nails' Started Twitter's Latest Mani Trend

by Rosie Narasaki

Her Twitter bio reads, "They call me 'Ham Nails'." That's pretty much all you need to know about Alina and the roots of her viral fame. Long story short, Twitter user @alinamarie____ started the viral social media trend of matching your mani to random objects, and it's actually kind of amazing. And, yes, a ham mani is where it all started.

Back in January, Alina sent a tweet featuring a flawless set of pink nails color-matched perfectly with a slice of ham and a strawberry milkshake. She followed up the photo with a straightforward, "Yes.. the first picture is of ham.." and fended off people who questioned her reasoning behind the odd photo with a simple "cause I wanted to... lol." And thus a new viral manicure trend was born.

Alina's dedication to the trend continued to grow when she added to the thread just over a month later. This time, the photo featured her new taupe set of nails grabbing a handful of crumbled bacon with the accompanying text, "Y'all thought this was over?" That was back in February, but the post has now taken off in a major way. At the time of writing, the original tweet of "ham nails" has over 2.5k retweets and almost 10k favorites, with tons of mani lovers submitting their own nail color matching photos. The silly submissions range from spot-on to satirical.

"Ham nails," indeed. And you have to see her bacon-y follow-up:

There have been a lot of highlights since the look first started taking off last week, featuring everything from seafoam-colored can openers...

... to that one pair of orange scissors that everyone has lying around their house.

A particularly fabulous Pam can-colored manicure also made an appearance in the thread...

And it seems that the exact color of a Pepsi bottle label happens to make a pretty fly mani shade as well.

Subway seats made a surprisingly strong showing, too...

... As did a purple can of Lysol.

At one point, even Reebok jumped in on the trend:

Need an idea for your next mani? Take a cue from Ham Nails herself and pick a random object as inspo.