Look as a guy, who could care less about societal standards of beauty (mine or anyone elses) I feel under qualified to comment on the beauty choices of others.

But I can say I felt the decision tree explanation in the article was unconvincing. Reviewers need long nails because photos? Because to some demographic long nails "look better". (Personally I think long nails look bad, but that's maybe just me.)

I felt like the author like long nails. They're clearly invested in long nails. That should be enough to like or dislike the product. They should have to justify their desire for long nails. (Justifing it suggests they know it has disadvantages.)

I concur that conforming to beauty standards in a world that both presents them as standards, then designs away from those standards consumes more energy than I have to expend.

I read the author's statement that they were "not out here wearing long nails for fun" to mean that they were not the one liking or invested in long nails. I may be reading too deeply between the lines, but I believe that reading the critical comments left by the "Internet Nail Police" may be more energy-consuming than the alternative of conforming to beauty standards. I felt a tone of sarcasm from the offense taken at "god forbid, there’s a smudge of dirt under [their] natural nail," which I took to mean that these comments are nitpicky and extremely likely to occur. Though it may be easy to brush off some amount of social scorn, being a public figure on the Internet comes with a volume of it that I've heard many influencers and content creators describe as difficult to cope with no matter how strong I assumed them to be.

Yeah, I don't love it either and I can think of workarounds (short fake nails?), but it's silly to say you (the previous poster, rather) "cannot fathom what goes on in their head" when they've spelled it out.