All over the world, women have two armed weapons in their arsenal, One. A taser gun. Two. A red lipstick.
That is why, you, especially men, must beware this product. Since us women can draw on strength from this great source.
To prove my theory, let me put on a little demo for you all.
[Hands tied at the back, pacing back and forth, face turned to the audience] Don’t I look a fair bit clad in this Midnight Blue dress with nails painted a subtle shade of silver grey [wagging all 8 fingers at the audience] all paired with a decent pair of heels.
[Start unbuttoning the box and brandishing the lipstick before starting to apply it] Yet it is only when I make an application of this strong red tint on my lips that there is some fire in the game.
This short applicator has the power to take forward a woman’s message, loud & clear, even more so when it comes from a universally attested high-end brand [cheekily whisper MAC]
*It deserves a certain dedicatory ritual procedure involving
- A brief look at yourself in the mirror enclosed by the lipstick case
- Slowly picking the applicator out
- Rounding up complete application of the tint and finishing it with a smack as in competition with Thano’s snap
- And one last look at your visage that is initiated on killer mode
Besides just accentuating the source of a female voice, it does also provide the right deflection from lewd stares of men at a woman’s breasts.
That is the vantage point a woman like, you and I, seek to forward our cause of feminism.
The point of that instant shift of a male gaze from a vulgarly noted point of target in a conversation, to a tenable alternative… But if you are wondering, [in the tone of a little smug, additional remark] the ideal case is when a man looks the woman in the eye and converses thusly.
In ‘The History of Lipstick’,
What started off as the cosmetic application akin to a status symbol in an ancient civilization, turned into an agent of oppression in the middle Ages that restricted all women but prostitutes to make use of lipstick.
Later seen during the reign of Queen Elizabeth was the endorsement of ‘Red Lip’ by show men and women as well as the higher class of women associated with nobility.
But as the 20th century began and 1920 made the corner, we saw the mass commercialization of Lipstick.
Even the economic depression couldn’t deter women’s fad for lipstick. Further, the syndication of magazines propagated a higher traction for its case.
This was also the era that revolutionized the symbolism of lipstick in pop culture. As best vocalised by the fashion designer, Coco Chanel, “If you are sad, put on some lipstick and attack.”
The same period of time when women put on a defiant suit against patriarchal biases in the first wave of feminism which lent such symbolism to lipstick as well.
You can see this in a 60-year old woman on a metro in Paris who can coolly take out a bashing red Rouges A Levres (French for Lipstick) and apply it without the slightest sway of her mind being seen.
This goes on to show that an object that is equally viewed as a want of consumerism or simply sexist can turn the mind of a woman onto a path of confidence.
In effect, a woman who is jewelled up, smells good but above all, red-lipped can never be shaken out of her self-assuredness.
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