Lipstick contest
Lip Colors for the Mature Woman
Advertising copy to put in a drawer…
All the lipsticks in the advertisement copy for the mature woman are in various shades of neutral — natural lip color — plum or pale pinkish tan or brownish rose. I am here at the back of the drawer, Coral.
She likes the color coral, wears bright coral tops and coral earrings, and bought me, a coral lipstick, but I don’t fit the mature woman’s lips. Coral brings out the yellow, and let’s face it, mature women have more yellow teeth. There is too much yellow to highlight the mouth in coral.
Blue surgical masks, white, poochy masks, black masks — there were the recent years in masks. She didn’t go full Nancy Pelosi and have tailor-made matching masks to be a fashionista. All the lipsticks scooted together at the back of drawers, abandoned, worldwide.
No need for lipstick if you hide the mouth. Mascara and eye shadow might get over-used in compensation, but they aren’t sexy all by themselves.
You need a lipstick.
Someone packages the lipsticks in plastic tubes or fine, metal tubes, ribbed or bejeweled or made to be sensitively touched, shown off, or pulled ostentatiously out of an evening bag.
She doesn’t carry evening bags anymore. She can’t see well at night. If things are going to get romantic, she prefers the dark: dark enough to hide the extra rolls and wrinkles. No last-minute splotch of lipstick, to leave a tell-tale mark on his shirt. (Cue Lipstick on your collar).
I, Coral, am unlikely to come out of the back of the drawer, plastic tube and all. Some shades have even lost the top cover, and it doesn’t seem to matter. She doesn’t throw us out, for years. We get old here.
So does she. Metaphorically, she’s in the back of the drawer, too. Lipstick? Once in a great while, she dresses up, wears jewelry, and pulls out the nice stuff.
Some cream, some cover-up, and too few eyelashes to waste mascara on. But the cupid’s bow? Still there, still love for the natural shades of lipstick, the lipstick you can’t tell is on lipstick, but her lips are darker. Maybe a spritz of cologne.
As for me, Coral, I’m here till we’re all cleared out — she is waiting and so are we.
Check out this cartoon and story by Liza Donnelly — one of the Best Ever, says I:
