Lipstick Astrology
Lipstick? Aisle 6B. I�ll show you. You know, you can tell a lot about a woman by the kind of lipstick she wears. I know what you�re thinking. You�re thinking color, right? Color�s the first thing that comes to mind when you consider lipsticks. For good reason, I�m not trying to deny it. Someone who grabs �natural nude� without a second glance at the glittering pinks and reds is not the same person who spends hours perusing the rows upon rows of bruised plum and divaglam pink, arranged carefully on the shelf from light to dark, as if there were some proper way to conduct this perusing. I can hear the corporate execs now: �We can�t have them mismatched on the shelves, what chaos would ensue! They must be put in order, light to dark, pink then red then purple, otherwise the women will get confused. They won�t know where to look first, and they�ll give up and look away.� So yes, color is important. But there are so many more things a tube of lipstick can tell you.
Like the name of the lipstick. Two identical shades of red. One called Red Brick Road, and the other called Red Light Dream. Which one do you pick? Do you even see that they�re the exact same color? Probably not. You have fallen for it. You say to yourself, �am I a red brick road kind of woman, or do I have red light dreams?� You don�t even think about what these names mean. Inevitably you are drawn to one more than the other, and without giving it anymore thought, and believing you have found the best color for yourself, even though the two shades are the same, you walk out of the store with your Red Brick Road. Or maybe you chose Red Light Dream. Either way, I could probably tell you what you had for breakfast last week.
I know, I can hear you now. You�re an unbeliever in the art of lipstick astrology. �It�s just lipstick,� you say. �It doesn�t matter that much. I could wear a different color each day of the week. What then? Or even better, I could blend colors. Two, three, four colors mixed on top of each other. What do you make of that?� You, unbeliever, have not even hit the tip of the iceberg. Lipstick Astrology goes far beyond what you could imagine.
Have you ever considered what the type of lipstick you choose says about you? No, I�m not talking about brand names here. I�m talking about chapstick versus lipstick versus lip-gloss. Long lasting, moisturizing, glitter, matte. Ok, so some might be a little obvious, I�ll give you that. Those all day wearers, you can usually figure them out pretty quickly. It�s one of two things. Either they�re busy women who don�t have the time or luxury to run to the bathroom in the middle of the day and reapply their lipstick, or they�re women who wish they were so busy they didn�t have time to run to the bathroom. This second group I find most interesting. The difficulty comes in deciding which group a woman falls into when she buys her tube of long wear lipstick. I�ll give you a hint though. If you see them later, wearing the clear �shine gloss� that always comes with the long lasting, because what the commercials don�t tell you is that stuff dries your lips out worse than a 25 mile an hour wind on a below freezing winter day, if you see them wearing it, then they�re the wannabes. The really busy ones don�t have time to bother with any gloss. It�s long lasting or nothing, baby. Don�t even get me started on the rest. I could go all day.
Chapstick versus lip-gloss. What I can�t figure out is how a woman chooses one over the other. Sure, chapstick moisturizes, and you don�t have to use your fingers to put it on, but lip-gloss has the added bonus of color and shine. According to the lipstick astrology handbook, a pure chapstick wearer is usually an athletic type, but that seems too simple. She must not feel like she has someone to impress. Maybe she�s not single anymore, or maybe she just doesn�t care. She makes me sad. Every woman needs a little color in her life, why not go for the lip-gloss? I�m not saying you have to be a true lipstick wearer, there are other acceptable alternatives.
And finally, my favorite. The lipstick itself. After you�ve chosen your color, your representative name, your kind, you take the lipstick home and try it on. If it looks good, you keep wearing it. A few months down the road, you open your tube of lipstick just like you do every day, and you notice something. It has changed shape. You see, each woman has her own way of applying lipstick, and each way invariably changes the shape of the lipstick. They all start off with their factory mold: pointed on one end, sloped with a perfect 45-degree angle. But you open five different purses and you�ll find five different shapes of lipstick. Some will be similar to the factory mold. Some will be completely flat. Some will have an arc carved into them. Of course, the long lasting girls and the lip-gloss and chapstick queens, well they don�t fit into this category, because they have different methods of application, a wand, a finger. This, I think, is why I love the shape so much. It�s so particular. It takes a very certain kind of woman to make a matte mauve crescent moon. Not even mother nature has done that one yet. I�m just not interested in the flat ones, the women who apply their lipstick so quickly they just mash it against their lips. They don�t understand the art of it. Often, they�re the ones who just grab and go, without even considering the name. I have a suspicion that the mashers, as I like to call them, are the busy women who haven�t discovered long wear yet, but I don�t really know. I�m kind of new to this lipstick astrology stuff.
My particular area of study is really the moon makers. There�s something special about a woman who takes the time to carve the moon into her morning routine. The moon�s not made of cheese, it�s made of lipstick, didn�t you know? It takes an art and finesse not possessed by every woman to do this. She must curl her bottom lip inward and smile. This makes the curve, and this is what I am drawn to. A woman who takes the time to smile in the morning is the kind of woman who will make you soup when you�re sick and love your iguana as much as you do. But believe it or not, there�s more to it than this. You see, you can�t curl the upper lip and apply the lipstick the same way, or it will ruin the curve. It will flatten it. So you must use the tip of the lipstick ever so carefully to coat the upper lip. And then the next morning you curl your bottom lip and restore the moon to it�s perfect shape. It�s a constant waning and waxing you see. That�s what makes it so beautiful.
So, what have you decided on? Oh, the long wear. �Barely There.� I see. That�ll be 10.75.
neb 3/19/05