Sotomayor Opts for Red Nails and ‘a Friend with No Strings Attached’
Latina Magazine cover.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor had doubts about taking a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Three weeks before the nomination was announced, Sotomayor confessed to a friend that she was considering withdrawing her name from consideration, Latina magazine reports. The Associated Press has the highlights. Sotomayor was worried that she would lose her privacy and time with her mother, family and friends.
The friend, lawyer Lee Llambelis, told Sotomayor to stay in the running. “This is not about you,” Llambelis reportedly told Sotomayor. “It’s about the little girls and boys, brown and black, who live in the projects and poor communities around our nation, who can dream bigger if you are in the Supreme Court.”
Prior news stories said the White House had chosen Sotomayor’s suit—in a tasteful beige hue, according to one report—for her acceptance ceremony. The Latina story says the administration also advised Sotomayor to paint her fingernails a neutral shade during the confirmation process.
But Sotomayor threw caution to the wind at a White House reception after her confirmation, showing off her freshly painted red fingernails and wearing red and black semi-hoop hearings, the story says. Obama joked that Sotomayor had been briefed on nail color and earring size.
“Mr. President, you have no idea what you’ve unleashed,” Sotomayor replied. The article was written by Sotomayor’s close friend, Sandra Guzman, a former editor-in-chief at Latina who also attended the event. Sotomayor is “the new personification of an intellectual rock star,” the story says.
The article also delves into Sotomayor’s love life and her relationship advice: Too many people suffer when they can’t live up to the Cinderella paradigm, and the path to happiness may lie in making up the rules. Her most recent relationship was with “a friend with no strings attached.”
Sotomayor didn’t grant an interview, but she posed for the magazine sporting her red fingernails and judicial robe.
