First published April 11, 2021.
Yes, she really did cut them. In April 2021, Ayanna Williams of Houston, Texas, who held the Guinness World Records title for the longest fingernails on a living woman's hands, had her nails taken off after close to three decades of growth. At the final measurement, the ten nails added up to 733.55 centimetres, or 24 feet 0.7 inches.
That number is easy to repeat and hard to picture. Here is what it actually measures, what living with such nails involved, who did the cutting, and where the nails are now.
The record in numbers
Guinness first confirmed Williams as a record holder in 2017, and she appeared in the Guinness World Records 2018 book. At that point her nails totalled 576.4 cm (18 ft 10.9 in).
She kept going. Four years later the total had grown by roughly 157 cm, which is why the 2021 figure was itself a new record in the category "longest fingernails on a pair of hands (female)".
The key word is combined. Guinness adds together the length of every nail on both hands, so no single nail was anywhere near 24 feet. Divided across ten fingers, the average comes to a little over 73 cm per nail: still most of a metre of curled, polished keratin on each fingertip.
According to Guinness, she had not trimmed them since the early 1990s and had spent more than 28 years on the project.
How she compares with other record holders
Williams held the title among living people. The all-time mark in the same category belongs to Lee Redmond, an American woman from Utah who started growing her nails around 1979. Guinness gives her peak combined length as 8.65 m (28 ft 4.5 in), well beyond Williams' total.
Redmond lost her nails on 10 February 2009, when she was thrown from a car during a four-car pile-up in Holladay, Utah. Her nails broke off in the crash. Because of cases like hers, Guinness separates the longest nails ever measured from the longest on someone alive at the time.
The living title did not stay empty for long after Williams' cut. In 2022 Diana Armstrong became the holder of the record for the longest fingernails on a pair of female hands. On the single-hand side, the best-known name is Shridhar Chillal of India, who holds the record for the longest fingernails on one hand.
What everyday life looked like
Nails on this scale shape almost every movement. Williams told Guinness that ordinary chores were a struggle: washing the dishes and putting sheets on the bed were among the tasks she found hard. She described having to think a step ahead all the time so she would not snag, crack a nail or injure herself.
Upkeep was a job of its own. When she was measured in 2017, a full manicure took more than two bottles of polish and around 20 hours. By 2021, with even longer nails, a paint job used three or four bottles spread over several days.
Public reactions, she said, were mostly kind, especially from children. She liked to tell curious kids that her nails were older than they were, which by the end was simply true. And she was clear that the nails were never the whole of her identity:
"With or without my nails, I will still be the queen," she told Guinness.
How the nails were cut, and where they went
The cutting was done by dermatologist Dr Allison Readinger of Trinity Vista Dermatology in Fort Worth, Texas. After one last official measurement, she used an electric rotary tool to get through the thick, twisted nails; some early reports described it as a saw. Ordinary clippers would have been useless at that thickness.
The video above shows the session, including the final measurement and the first moments after the cut.
The nails were not thrown away. They were preserved for display at the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum in Orlando, Florida, which collects record-breaking curiosities. Williams told Guinness she planned to grow her nails again, just not back to anything like record length. Looking ahead, she put it simply: "I'm so, so ready for a new life."
Why records like this are measured as a total
Very long nails do not grow straight. Past a certain length they curve, spiral and twist, and each finger behaves differently. Adding the ten lengths together gives one figure that can be compared fairly from person to person and from year to year, which is why both Williams' and Redmond's records are quoted as combined totals.
It also explains why the numbers jump so much between measurements. A modest gain on each finger becomes a large change once it is multiplied by ten, so four extra years took Williams from just under 19 feet to just over 24.
Guinness also keeps separate categories for men and women and for one hand versus two, so headlines that simply say "longest nails in the world" can refer to quite different records.
Common questions about extremely long nails
Why does it take decades?
Fingernails grow slowly, only a few millimetres a month, and long nails break easily. Reaching record length means years of protecting every finger from knocks, which is why the holders in this category have spent most of their adult lives on it.
Do nails keep growing after death?
No. This is a long-standing myth. After death the skin dries and pulls back, which can make nails and hair look longer, but no new growth takes place.
Is it safe to grow nails this long?
Williams' own account shows the practical risks: injuries from catching a nail, and real limits on daily tasks. Anyone with concerns about their nails or their health should talk to a doctor. It is telling that the cut itself was handled by a dermatologist with proper tools.
Williams' story ends on a light note. After nearly 30 years, she chose the day her record ended, kept her sense of humour, and handed the nails over to a museum where visitors can now see the scale for themselves.
Sources: Guinness World Records: Woman with world's longest nails has them cut after almost 30 years (April 2021); Wikipedia: Lee Redmond. Video: Guinness World Records. The story was also reported by CNN in April 2021.
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