Paint the Nails Queer: Nail Art as Heteronormative Resistance in TV Series GELBOYS (2025)

บทคัดย่อ

Building on visual cultural and feminist lenses, this paper examines nail art shown in GELBOYS (2025) and proposes that nail art is a visual object, considering a communicative tool to discuss gender issues. This study approaches nail art through Judith Butler’s gender performativity, which views gender as an act individuals perform to fit into society, to argue that nail art not only demonstrates how teenagers use and stylize their nails for self-expression, but also symbolizes the fluidity and performativity of gender that characters explore through different styles of nail art. Plus, it leads us to see that nail art is gender-neutral. While it can be done, changed, and redone, gender can be altered likewise. This changeability can be seen during the show when characters start and end their relationship with characters of different genders. The author concludes this paper by suggesting that although GELBOYS (2025) is about queer romance, it is arguably one of the progressive LGBTQIAN+ series that attempts to establish homonormativity in a long-established heteronormative society through a fashion that is mostly associated with women. As long as there is no right or wrong for fashion, there is no right or wrong for anyone to become any gender, too.