MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
Or should that be red my lipstick?
After months of no-going-out and mask-wearing (which abhors the use of lipstick) and thanks to Angel Locsin, I remembered I had a little carousel of lipsticks in different colors. But no red.
It used to be the convention that red lipstick was too bold to be considered decent for respectable women under age 40. (Did this mean that women 40 and up didn’t have to be respectable any longer?) On girls and ladies with kissable lips like Angel, why wait for 40 to get away with bloody-red lipstick?
What’s a lipstick, anyway? With attention focused on red-tagging and Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade’s tiff with the most gorgeous Filipinas on earth, red lipstick is hot news with Angel’s endorsement: “Yes to red lipstick” and its Black Swan twin: “No to red-tagging.” Wonder why lifestyle writers haven’t taken to forecasting red lipstick as the in thing to wear, to have, and to spread (through kissing). As the dictionary sees it, lipstick is nothing more than “a stick of cosmetic coloring for the lips.”
For many women, lipstick is second only to dark glasses, aka shades, in the competition for the single most useful accessory in their arsenal of attention catchers. Over the years, fabulous claims of the power of lipstick have been made by Revlon and its rivals. Moisturized with lanolin or something, its best imagined qualities would be its “lasting” qualities – lunch, after lunch, drinks, dinner, drinks, coffee, then a long kiss goodbye? Claims have been made of its 24-hour durability!
Lipstick colors move like fashion, changing with the seasons and depending on the manufacturer’s whims. From sweetly pink long ago to wicked purple and ghoulish black, the current rage is toward the naked and the nude. To achieve the naked look, you need help from your lipstick.
As for General Parlade, who else but Angel Locsin the angel-philanthropist would stand up for him after he painted her and her sister red? “He’s doing his job,” she said before tearfully admitting she feared for her and her sister’s lives. The general’s job, it appears, is to warn women against being influenced, brainwashed, and recruited by enemies of the state.
Advice to the young and impressionable: Read his lips.