A woman has left people baffled with her impressively long nails, which she last trimmed more than 25 years ago – and social media users have all been left with the same question
A woman’s lengthy fingernails have left people with serious questions.
Diana Armstrong from Minnesota, US, has earned the Guinness World Record for the longest fingernails on a pair of women’s hands ever recorded. The combined length of her talons measured more than 13m when she was awarded the record in 2022.
Armstrong stopped trimming her nails in 1997 and now paints her impressive claws in different colours. The Guinness World Records’ official Instagram page shared Armstrong’s story, writing: “The combined length of Diana’s fingernails is longer than a standard yellow school bus!Diana has been growing her fingernails for over 25 years!”
But social media users all had the same question. One wrote: “How does she wipe ? Genuine curiosity.” Meanwhile another added: “The wiping was my first thought but has she ever worked? Like, there’s no way you could legit do anything herself.”
A third chimed in: “How does she get anything done at all, like anything, including fitting into a car? Or clothes.”
Armstrong answered the question shortly after she first broke the record. In an interview, she revealed: “Well you know, when I go to the bathroom it’ll be the same as anyone else going to the bathroom, just I work with my nails probably in a different way they’d work with theirs.
“I use a lot of toilet paper. I don’t wrap it around my hand like some people do, I can’t do it like that, because it ain’t going to work that way.”
The questions for Armstrong didn’t stop there. One person wrote: “How many bottles of nailpolish does it take,” while another chimed in: “Why was i thinking those were dreadlocks.”
Others asked why Armstrong had decided to grow her nails so long – and there’s a tragic tale behind the decision. On the day she vowed never to trim the talons again, she had asked her children to wake up while she went to the supermarket.
But while she was out, her youngest daughter called her and revealed her 16-year-old, Latisha, wouldn’t wake up. It was then she discovered her child had sadly passed away in her sleep from an asthma attack.
Armstrong previously said: “That was the worst day of my life.” She had always had long nails which would be lovingly manicured by Latisha each weekend.
“She was the only one who did my nails. She polished them and filed them for me,” she said. Armstrong, who suffered from depression for the decade after her daughter’s death, said keeping her nails long was her way of honouring her daughter and keeping her memory alive.
