The Magic of the Red Lipstick
By: Laura A. Heeter
Tags: Identity, Beauty, Memories, Confidence, Self

The Magic of the Red Lipstick

Photo by Євгенія Височина on Unsplash

When I put on lipstick, I have to lean in close to the mirror.

It’s a phenomenon that mirrors the fact you can’t put on mascara without opening your mouth, lips slightly pursed in concentration. But mascara is child’s play. Lipstick is for grown-ups.

I rarely wear lipstick. It always seems to smudge off on my face, my drink, my food, my fork, but worst of all, my teeth. Smile and reveal a lipstick-stained grin, flakes of color splattered across a creamy background of orthodontially-assisted teeth (thanks Mom & Dad).

But today is a day for lipstick.

So, I’ll hover mere inches from the mirror as I try to outline my lips with a long-lasting, no-smudge streak of color and hope for the best. My lips are more like Kylie Jenner a la the 2010 Kardashians than her 2020 fluffy pout, so this is inevitably going to be a bit less perfect, and a lot less pouty, than I might like. But today isn’t about pillowy, bee-stung lips expertly lined and filled.

Today is about the magic of the lipstick.

I’ll lean back and close my eyes, just briefly, and squeeze slightly, lashes entangling like the two halves of a Venus fly trap, ready to ensnare whatever dreams arise behind my eyes. I may not be Dorothy, but I’ll mentally click my heels together three times, only instead of sparkly red shoes, I have a dynamite red lip.

Time to open my eyes.

It may still be December 2020 (no way to get around that), but Laura in the red lipstick is different. She lives in a world before (and hopefully) after the pandemic. Before the job layoff, the lockdown, isolation, anxiety, and sadness. She is who I was and who I will be again.

She is the woman who loved to laugh.

She is the woman who dared to dream big.

She is the woman with vibrance and energy.

The lipstick reminds me of the woman who sat on her co-workers’ desks at the office, casually and confidently collaborating. It reminds me of the times we ducked out of the office late and went to drink and share joy and sadness and community, sipping overly-sugary happy hour specials out of tall glasses with sassy, naked mermaid stir sticks. The red lipstick is the confidence she felt in her job, in her talent, in knowing that she brought value, had value, and knew her value.

The woman in the lipstick is the same woman who imbibed the electric energy of dance fitness classes in dark, black-lit basements, surrounded by women unabashedly loving themselves. She is the older rebirth of the girl who loved to dance at frat houses, the slick of beer and college mistakes wet beneath her shoes, slipping into the woman who loved to dance in the basement of bars, the shine of overpriced rail drinks and drowned yuppie inhibitions underneath her feet.

The red lipstick is a window into the woman who traveled, collecting experiences and memories from across the world. The woman who hosted fabulous dinner and cocktail parties, with custom soundtracks, eighteen-layer chocolate cakes that would be the envy of Bruce Bogtrotter, and a rotating selection of deceptively punchy punches carefully crafted by a loving husband with an obsessive attention to alcoholic and historic detail (ask him about the mini rowboat we had to put in our punch bowl one year).

The woman in the red lipstick is everything I was and much of who I want to be again. Without the lipstick, pale-lipped and in 2020, I am not the same. This year has laid bare much of my privilege, and even without a sweep of lip stain, my life is fortunate, blessed, and full of so many gifts. The hardest struggle, however, has been the loss of sense of self. A feeling of being adrift, unsure, rising and falling with tides of the unknown.

I have to close my eyes again. When I open them, I’ll still be in December 2020, but the joys and revelry of the red lipstick will have been washed away, leaving behind just the ruby red reminder painted so prominently on my face.

I don’t need to wear lipstick today. I’ll go to my living room and sit at my desk, the current equivalent of an office, and work alone. I’ll undoubtedly have conference calls, but it won’t be on video. I’ll have on a sweatshirt and my hair will lay about my shoulders wet and unstyled. No one will see me but me.

But I‘ll wear the lipstick anyway.

So that everyone, myself included, has a chance to meet and celebrate the woman in red.