Red Lipstick

Some time ago, I heard that in Europe young women were only wearing red lipstick. Nothing else, no foundation, no eyeshadow, nothing -- just red lipstick. And like most things prefaced by "I heard that in Europe", I decided to try it.

My face has a witchy kind of beauty. It is pointed in profile and almost childishly round when I face the mirror straight-on. My skin is very pale, spotted with fading freckles and creased minutely around my mouth and eyes. It takes on a bruised lavender color below my eyes, and always has: the blood vessels there peek up from my thin skin with all their color. At the time I tried to picture red alongside the rest there, bold and warlike and womanly, something that the Morrigan herself might wear.

I had been warned away from red lipstick by a lot of people. My mom thinks it draws out the red in her face, magazines advise women to stay away from it, and men on the internet are dedicated to telling women that they, personally, do not like when women wear it. And on the other side, many conservative people in my life and in the media always seemed to consider it too bold, too indecent. In 1770 The British Parliament actually passed a law banning lipstick with the reasoning that "women found guilty of seducing men into matrimony by a cosmetic means could be tried for witchcraft," and more than two hundred years later and across an ocean people still frown on it. The sense I had from these little bits and pieces of disapproval I had picked up throughout my life was uniformly negative, and it had relegated red lipstick, almost unconsciously, to the "don't do this" list inside my head.

Something unlocked when I heard about women just going for red lipstick, only red lipstick, regardless of all of this. These women may or may not exist: the idea of them was enough. I am a fragile creature who tends to seek approval and permission from other people; I'm not ashamed to admit it. I know now that these feelings are preyed upon by the cosmetics industry to sell their products, because capitalism is just, you know, so cool.

That moment of unlocking unfolded into a sense of defiance. Why was I not doing what I wanted to do? I liked the color red. I liked lipstick. I often felt too tired, too ill, or too stimulated to be able to apply more than a little make-up: the sensation on my skin isn't always tolerable. The information clicked into place in my head, you can only wear red lipstick. The equation should have been simple. What did it matter what people thought about it? Why did I care? I should just go for it.

I took the advice of Darth Vader. I searched my feelings for what I knew to be true, and once found, it seemed almost glaringly obvious, as though it had been with me all along. I should just go for it.

So I started going for it. Red lipstick and nothing else. An easy, manageable step, and an extra boost of energy to get me out the door. And I like it. I like it a lot. I've gotten compliments for it, even. I've come to feel good about it. I've also come to find that I can look down at the lipstick kiss on my coffee cup and feel like an action heroine in a post-apocalyptic dystopia, Underworld style, and that's a significant plus.

And if you've always wanted to wear red lipstick, alone or otherwise, and never felt able to, I want you to know that I think you should go for it, too.

#redlipstick