Ode to Lipstick

Sometime last year, various news sources began to declare that lipstick was dead; Long Live Lip Gloss.

I'm not ashamed to admit that yes, I too became caught up in the sheer and shiny lure of gloss and at one point carried no less than four around in my bag at any given time. However, gloss could never fully eclipse the deep and abiding love I feel in my heart for lipstick. Centuries of women before me, from as far back as Cleopatra in Egypt, would know what I'm talking about.

Lipstick, the colour red in particular, has been worn by women for thousands of years. Often symbolically, for better or for worse. Queen Elizabeth I, at one point in history the most powerful woman in the world, painted her lips a vivid scarlet red. A couple of hundred years later another queen, Queen Victoria, would declare the wearing of lipstick unacceptable for polite society and banish it to either the stage or the street. In other words, only actresses and prostitutes were caught wearing colour on their lips in 19th century England. By the 1920's and 30's, women of all walks of life had begun to wear lipstick as a symbol of their own feminity, freedom and growing independence.

I can remember the first lipstick I ever bought as a teenager. L'Oreal British Red Coat, a classic true red. My teenaged self considered it the epitome of glamour before I even really knew the meaning of the word. I also recall the first MAC lipstick I got by name: Siren. The deep burgundy with a hint of shimmer appealed to my burgeoning Goth sensibilities. These days I am more of a pink lipstick kind of girl, often the brighter the better. Depends on the day. Put simply, the lipstick that you wear - or don't wear - says a lot about who you are.

Lipstick is a makeover in a tube. Hell, some days it's more than that. Some days, it can be more like an anti-depressant. There is nothing better than carefully applying your favourite shade of lipstick in the middle of a bad day. In that moment, everything changes. The world suddenly seems a little bit brighter, that day you'd been having a little more bearable. It's magical.

I often joke that it's makeup, not a magic wand. With lipstick, however, I think it might just be a little bit of both.