By: Terry Hernon MacDonald As a child, I basked in my glamorous mother's shadow. I was not an attractive little girl. I had a chipped tooth, freckles and frizzy red hair that earned me the nickname Bicentennial Spaz among my classmates. I was so uncoordinated I tripped over my lunchbox. But the pain of being the class untouchable evaporated when Mom showed up at school for lunchroom duty, not in stretch pants and curlers like other women, but wearing red lipstick and a dress. She looked like a movie star. My classmates reminded me of my physical shortcomings on a daily basis, but I took a pride in my mother's appearance that nobody could take away. In third grade, I wore a princess costume for Halloween. Mom put lipstick on me for the occasion, coloring my mouth scarlet. I hooked up with my friend, Karen, to go trick-or-treating. "Wow!" she said. "You look just like your mother." It was at that moment that I developed a profound respect for the power of lipstick. I got sidetracked, though. Maybe it was teenage rebellion, but when I started wearing makeup for real, instead of just playing around with the stuff Mom kept in the Stride Rite box on her dresser, I avoided lip color. Instead, I smeared my eyelids with greasy shadow and flicked on the navy mascara that was the rage in 1975. Eyelids that resemble a Pepsi can may flatter blondes with blue eyes, but on a Danny Partridge look-alike like me, the effect was startling. Undeterred, I completed the look with Maybelline Kissing Potion, a clear gloss that was dispensed from a roll-on like a deodorant. It attracted insects, but it was the fashion. Lipstick was what your mother wore. My friends wouldn't touch it, and neither would I. Teen magazines counseled us to play up our eyes, to give them oomph! Small eyes like mine were considered tragic, but the magazines offered a prescription to make them look bigger: three shadows (lid color, contour, and highlighter), stripes of black liner on upper and lower lids, and multiple coats of mascara. I spent years looking as though I had been pitched down a flight of stairs. Then, during my sixteenth summer, I rediscovered lipstick. I was fiddling around in my mother's room after a shower one morning, my face Ivory pure, and just to kill time I tried one. It was as if someone turned on a light. |
The lipstick illuminated good things about my face and diminished everything that was wrong with it. My pale complexion glowed. My eyes looked less lizard-like; in fact, they were soft and alluring. My hair still needed to be kept on a leash, but hey, I looked pretty good. I became a lipstick fiend. To this day, I will not even get the mail unless I'm wearing it. Elaborate eye makeup is for Joan Collins. I am a lipstick girl. Today, a makeup bag sits on my dresser, containing 30 or 40 lipsticks. The other cosmetics I use, mascara and powder, don't fit. I need all this lipstick because I change the shade according to my mood and the condition of my skin, but the color is usually dramatic. I do not like beige lips, for instance. I am not from California. I am not one for the porn star mouth, either, where the lips are traced with a brown pencil and filled in with gloss. I go weak for red, though, and possess numerous shades with evocative names like Cherries in the Snow, Vixen, Love that Red, Passion, and Crimson. "Think you have a problem?" asked my friend, a recovering alcoholic, as I rummaged through the big bag while she was a guest at my house. I suppose I do. If I gave as much thought to achieving world peace as I do to lipstick, the world would be a safer place. My obsession has affected my own daughters, certainly. They have been begging me to put lipstick on them since they learned to talk. At nine and eight, they are forever raiding my stash. I've learned that Revlon's Wine With Everything flatters Maggie's pinkish skin, as well as Charlotte's warmer complexion. They demonstrated years ago that it also sticks like a spitball to the ceiling when volleyed upward. There is no doubt in my mind that my children are hooked on lipstick. Maybe they'll forsake it in their teens, as I did, and transform themselves by shaving their heads, but eventually they will reform and revel in the simple magic of lip color. And it will become a lifelong passion. Ask my mother, who is now 68, and wore a new shade today, not scarlet, but creamy red with brown undertones. The name of the bottom of the tube was, aptly enough, Glamorous. |