Read my red lips!

Rose McGowan

Rose McGowan once said, “I came out of the womb waving red lipstick”

Never mind that women in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and those across the Indus had to grind gemstones, or bugs (cochineal), or pulverized fish scales to provide iridescence to adore their lips some 2000 years ago, or that if I were a British woman in the 18th century and throughout the 19th century I would have been considered in the ‘very least’ marginal in my morality for wearing red lipstick; I don’t care! I probably have the infamous 19th-century, curly-haired actress and eventual courtesan beauty Sarah Bernhardt to thank – as a child my maternal great-grandfather likened my ‘flair for the dramatic’ to her. I love that for someplace between $13 and $40 or rather, (obscene) $62,000  I am transformed into a sensual, seductive, glamorous goddess of lip perfection (even as I might be modestly critical of my other assets). My current favorite is a hybrid I concoct by wearing a Face Cosmetics Stockholm matte finish red called ‘Secret’ over Nars Cruella lip crayon – just Snow White red enough! 

I can understand why some women (and men) might prefer Bert’s Bees to a sultry shade of vermilion or carmine or cherry – it’s just not me.  I have had sufficient conversations with girlfriends over the 40 years I have worn some version of red on my lips (at 12 it was Bonnie Bell lip gloss that had a red tint) to understand that red lips are not for everyone, but nothing makes me feel more immediately and divinely feminine (even if I am working in the garden and covered with mud, or sitting here at my computer writing) than putting on red lipstick.

Some months ago a journalist posted an enquiry on HARO asking how to choose the right shade of red lipstick. I am convinced every woman can wear red lipstick but you must be mindful of the tint matching skin tone (I absolutely cannot wear any with an orange-y tomato or salmon under-tone) and, yes, I think wearing red lipstick requires a certain level of confidence to ‘pull it off’ – a daring attitude bordering on la femme fatale, though if I am honest, wearing such has never felt contrived to me; actually, I feel quite naked without it.

A recent study at the University of Manchester confirms that men, even totally clueless ones, will fixate on lips wearing red for an average of 7.3 seconds! It’s ancient and primal, in our earliest human state our health was gauged by the ‘blossom’ on lips and cheeks – thus, a deeply held attraction to red tied to virility.

I have been known to leave my lip prints alongside terms of endearment to my niece and nephew in cards and books (if it was missing from something given to my niece she would ask me to put it there, for my nephew – yet unschooled in the mysteries of a woman’s lips – he would smear the cochineal colour from the end page) – I hope the men receiving my rather infrequent love letters didn’t feel as my nephew did!

I grew up watching ‘old movies’ on Sunday afternoons – with actresses such as Gene Tierney, Cyd Charisse, Maureen O’Hara, and Rita Hayworth, brilliant, fiery, glamorous women whose cupid’s bow mouths were ALWAYS adorned in some shade of ‘1940’s Screen Siren Red’ (as I refer to it) and their leading men always swept them back into their arms heedless of the lipstick. Maybe that is the point – as I see it the sweeping romantic leading man of my dreams will want to ravage my mouth heedless of the consequences!

Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Who are you? Where are you? I am waiting, darling!

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