Posted by Domenic on February 25, 2001 at 17:11:47:
I was reading this board yesterday and came across an earlier thread where someone got flamed violently for asking a simple question about a custom she had observed.
Long pinky nails on men are quite common in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Turkey. The length varies -- usually between 1 and 5 centimetres (1/4 - 2 inches) beyond the edge of the finger. The italians in the middle-to-lower section of Italy have gone way overboard with this custom. Some of them have grown and maintained pinky nails up to 12 cm long.
In Greece, I've seen them as long as 5 cm. The custom is meant to show that the wearer does not engage in manual labor, which would break the nails otherwise. From what I've been told, it used to be that all the nails were grown, but because that's too inconvenient, the nail that posed the least problem (the pinky) was grown by itself instead. Sometimes the thumbnails are also grown long as well, or the ring finger nails. Nowadays, it's more of a "macho/cool" thing. These guys will go to great lengths to preserve these nails as they take months to grow them out. I'm sure there are other people who have seen this custom too.
Don't flame me now ...
Domenic.