Hard Candy is the fruit of an investigation into the geographical, cultural, and socio-political influences on the aesthetics of Chicago nail art. This series of large-scale macro photographs illustrates the details and designs of acrylic hand-painted nails within mountains of confections, piles of glitter, and well-organized girlhood clutter to create novel relationships between material and color. These images capture a wide spectrum of skin tones, enriching and registering the visual diversity and complexity of racial identities. Because acrylic nails are synthetic add-ons to one’s natural body, they mark the ways in which bodies are racialized and render visible the constructed and performative qualities of racial identities. This work seeks to complicate explicitly observable relationships pertaining to race and class by reconfiguring pairings of specific Chicago nail art styles and their wearers.