PROJECT LIPSTICK
Jan. 3, 2010 – In four months NOMI PRINS writes a book exposing the intricate Wall Street scandal and I’m dinking around on the topic of lipstick. I reflect how frivolous my expose is in comparison. Here is a woman who has been a major player in the male-dominated financial industry on their terms, who then articulately takes on the heavy hitters of the finance and political worlds in her critically acclaimed book, “It Takes a Pillage.” That takes balls. After reading a chapter or so I venture back to her bio and, lo and behold, she is looking pretty foxy and fetching. I guess I was expecting a woman marked by more years and too much testosterone. But Nomi is young, beautiful… and wearing lipstick. The topic of lipstick is frivolous, but that is why it’s so intriguing, because despite the stigma, Nomi, like most women, wear it in Walmart or on Wall Street.
I’ve worn lipstick everyday for most of my life and plan to continue going forward. But why? It’s essential only in my mind — and the collective unconscious. It’s not vital to survival like a coat in the winter. Nor does it have a function like keys or even a hat. And it’s not a drug like coffee or cigarettes, or is it?
According to psychoanalyst Dr. Clotaire Rapaille in his book, The Culture Code, the code for beauty is men’s salvation. Our most profound recollections of feeling beautiful are tied to an experience where we affected a male’s behavior and most significantly changed him. So it becomes a woman’s magnanimous duty to be attractive lest we let down a society obligation to save men. That ludicrous mission should motivate us to chuck our lipstick tube out the first window available. Oh the pressure. But we’ve bought into it. We’re identified too deep to shed the ideal.
Mere insight into some unconscious and irrational behavior is no match for stepping out looking good, or more on point, stepping out and not looking haggard. We’ve nurtured this look/role since reading Snow White in her shapely size-4 peasant gown and ruby red, kiss-readied lips, even while tidying up the cabin with the squirrels. But the real player in this story is the withered, poison apple bearing old crone. To avoid being her, the killer of beauty, is the real motivating factor.
So here we are, empowered with our ruby red lips each day as we head out into the world, ever-poised for the lonely prince of our dreams to kiss and deliver himself from a meaningless life of solitude. Even bad-ass, action figure super heroines have kick butt without mussing their flawless lip color. And don’t get me started on their high heels. My motto is, ‘Never wear shoes you can’t run in — drag queens exempt.’
For now, it’s all about lipstick. The characters in the following stories are different but the common note is that long-lasting, feather-proof, glide on, glam boosting, colorizing, moisturizing, matte or satin frost finish phenomenon called lipstick.
TAKING ON THE WORLD W/O LIPSTICK
Two women – partners and health professionals – decide to open a health center. They buy an old house in a “transitional” neighborhood and take on the renovation – sola. Acupuncturists, now project managers and construction workers, signed the bottom and brace for the long haul.
To begin, they need to add a foundation. So the old, weary 3-story house is jacked up and chaos ensues. They trade their acupuncture needles for hammers and nails. Case-studies become project plans and blue-prints. Steel-toed boots, tool belts and hard hats replace the familiar white clinical smocks of their profession. And the herbs and formulas they prescribe are for aching muscles they never knew they had.
When Beth, a friend from out of town comes to visit, the two women give her a tour through the rustic labyrinth of a house in transition, one that has been striped to its framing, and even that is being replaced. This could describe her two friends as well. They are women in transition, striped down to the support beams that manifest from their DNA, an essential self that exists regardless. Lacking experience and skills, they are making it up on the high beam and not looking down.
Beth notes how exhausted they are from lack of sleep and long hours on the project. They walk her through the rooms adding imagery and details to the plywood shell, “This will be the common lobby. And here is an upstairs treatment room with a private bath.” As they proudly show off their work-in-progress, Beth sees it’s their dream and mission that sustains them. “In three months it will be a warm, thriving health center in a transitional neighborhood in a hipster city,” she reflects, “And they did it all without lipstick.”
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A CONVERSATION WITH A GUY
GUY: I want the seduction chapter. I would make it entertaining.
I need a grant.
G: I would make it hilarious and why women wear lipstick. I betcha everyone has a different reason.
You think so? I could ask people; A man on the street thing. Or woman?
G: You could do both.
What do you see as hilarious, like a Marilyn Monroe comedy?
G: Every page is different. Like the two lesbians. Then you go to the high power woman, who uses it to meetings. And wins every time she wears it. Then there’s the beauty queen who adorns herself with makeup. Anyhow. I just thought you’d have unlimited resources.
I love the little old ladies in lipstick.
G: My sister puts it on, right before going into home depot or a coffee shop. All day long she doesn’t wear it. But right before she goes in. I think it’s kind of funny. Or a fun thing. I like it. But I think women use it as a tool — and a women’s arsenal of tricks.
I bet a lot of men…
G: You could do it on gay guys. I finally got to wear lipstick. Makes me feel so good.
Do you want to wear lipstick?
G: Do I? Pause. I wouldn’t mind it doing it in private; See how good of a women I could be.
Yea. Women get to dress like men all the time.
G: Guys appreciate it. They do.
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DEFYING GRAVITY
She gets on the bus, a little slowly. A man moves aside to give up his seat near the door. The blue, jeweled broach on the label of her white wool coat is one of the many details she’s attended to for this outing — on this bus. Though her face has had to concede to the years, her lipstick shows she has not. Planted firmly on her face like a red badge of courage, she suspends the hard cold rules of physics with a magic wand. Where is she going in her sensible heels that are planted on the floor, like her lipstick, squarely, defiantly, still in step with the beat of life, alongside the other passengers’ leather boots and contemporary, high-tech styles? Maybe she’s out to meet a friend for a lively conversation about what the president is doing and the high price of tangerines. She’ll sit at a table as she waits in quiet observation, a person who is not so unlike the haughty roomful of disembodied hipsters on caffeine and connected via wi-fi. Because she too once thought she’d never be old. But she is and still wearing lipstick.
