The other evening, I met one of my sisters for a little holiday shopping and a Thanksgiving cocktail. As Mary and I sipped our margaritas, I reached into my bag to grab a lipstick, and we soon found ourselves reveling in a deep conversation about the joys of lip color.
Our love affair with makeup began when we were kids. Our mom, an ardent fan of movie magazines and beauty tips from starlets, began selling Studio Girl Cosmetics out of our home as a little hobby. Every couple of weeks, a big cardboard box would arrive on our doorstep from Hollywood. My sisters and I would come home from school to find Mom on the living room sofa, surrounded by fancy-looking boxes of fragrance, body lotion and makeup.
We were always intrigued by her product samples, especially the mini lipsticks in every shade of the rainbow. My faves were the pinks and corals, and I got in the habit of applying a little Golden Coral to my lips each morning before the school bus arrived (without Mom’s knowledge, of course). Looking back, I’m sure my sixth-grade classmates thought I was a little nuts, but even then I was comfortable forging my own path.
Lately, I’ve abandoned the pinker shades in favor of cherry red. Not too orange, not too purple. But a true red.
“Is it lame to write about lipstick in my next blog post?” I asked Mary, as we savored our cocktails. “With all the unrest in the world, I might feel a little frivolous if I devoted an entire post to lipstick.”
“Not at all!” replied my sister, who seems to wear a different shade of Clinique every time I see her. Her eyes grew wide as saucers. “I luvvvvvvvvv lipstick. It makes me so happy. I dream about all the new colors and have sooooooo much fun trying them on. And whenever I need a little pick-me-up, I run to the mall and treat myself. Lipstick makes me feel pretty!” At this point, Mary had become quite animated and I feared that she might require resuscitation.
Wow, I thought. It’s pretty cool that something as simple as lip color could create such a stir in a grown woman. And who couldn’t use a boost of happiness nowadays? It seemed that I had stumbled upon a fine blog topic for this week.
My advice to all you girls is to throw caution to the wind and try something new. Cheery cherry reds are super hot for the holidays, and every makeup counter has oodles of samples, begging to be explored.
Whether you visit the Mall at Short Hills for Dior’s fabulous Holiday Diorific lipstick or you dash into your neighborhood Walgreens for a tube of tried-and-true L’Oreal Colour Riche, there’s a fresh new shade just around the corner, ready to complement your lips and lift your spirits. (You wouldn’t want to get caught under the mistletoe with undressed lips, would you?)
Happy shopping,
Susan