The Right Shade

My sister, Hadassah, and I have been on a quest for the right shade of red lipstick for the past 30 plus years. You’d think it was easy. Red is red. No so much. There are a million shades of red. Some are bluer, some more orange. Then there’s the consistency; matt, glossy, creamy.

Trying them on in the stores is impossible. If you wanna go cheap and use a drug store brand, you can’t try them on because they are sealed shut by cardboard and plastic and you need a jack hammer to remove it. Sometimes they have a picture of the color on the front of the package. Sometimes you can see the tip of the lipstick through a clear portion of the packaging. Sometimes neither. If you CAN open up a tube and look at the color in the store, do you really want to try that one after a million people have tried it? There’s more than bacteria in those. Then, if you do buy one of these, the color is never the same shade as it looked in the packaging when you take it home. And then you can’t return it!

Speaking of more than bacteria, have you been to Sephora? There, you can try on any makeup you like. Anyone off the street can go into Sephora and try anything they like. They provide alcohol and clean applicators. Even if people do use the alcohol, I’m sure they’re not using it properly. I’m positive that if they tested the sample make up in there they’d find way more than bacteria on the stuff. I’ve gotten deathly ill after some visits to Sephora. There’s more bacteria in one tube of lip gloss at Sephora than on a toilet seat at Lucky Chang’s washroom.

But even if you don’t get deathly ill trying on the stuff, the lighting is so bad, that if you find something that you like, it never looks the same when you get it home. If it is any consolation, you can return at Sephora.

Same goes for shopping for make up at a department store make up counter. It has to be a whole production to try something on. The salesgirl corners you and has to sit you down and apply the make up for you. She doesn’t even put it on straight and then does a big sales pitch and you feel all obligated. So much pressure! How can you make decision?? I can’t. When you finally do pick one, you bring it home, try it on, at it’s a totally different color than when you tried it on in the store!

Then, when you finally finally love one, they discontinue it! And you find yourself scraping your favorite lipstick out of the bottom of the container with a tiny brush in order to get one more use out of it.

Not to mention, now they tell you you have to throw your make up out after two months of wearing it, otherwise it’s laced with bacteria! Even if you just spent $45 on it! What a racket!

The same goes for bras and underwear too. As soon as you find the exact right panty in the exact right size and the exact right material, that doesn’t ride so far up your butt crack and give you the biggest wedgy you ever had, it gets DISCONTINUED!! So then, you end up wearing your old scrap pairs of panties, that don’t ride up your ass crack, forever. Sewing up its holes by hand in order to get just one more wearing out of them.

Yea, right! Panties that cover your touché. What a concept! Maybe you don’t feel like wearing a thong. Maybe you don’t feel like having the only thing between you and the world be a thin piece of material. I know I don’t! I need to have more of a barrier between me and my platonic friends and co-workers!!

So, what’s the big freakin’ deal with the VPL (visible panty line) anyway? Why is it so horrible? Taboo? Oooo, she has VPL! She’s a fashion disaster! People are so appalled about it. They’re so obsessed; they venture to risk UTI’s (urinary tract infections) galore. Not to mention the discomfort of a bleeding, scabbing, shitty, dingle berry ass crack.

I was watching VH1’s 50 most horrible fashion ‘DON’TS’. I watched that friggin show for two hours to find out the number one fashion DON’T. It was so boring, I wanted to poke my eyes out. So, you know what #1 was? VPL. Are you freaking kidding me? If, God forbid, I wear underwear, I’m a fashion DON’T?! Kiss my ass in Macy’s window! With my big fat bloomers!!

Okay, okay. I gotta calm down.

Now no one really wears red lipstick anymore. Instead we wear light-colored gloss. But it’s still the same story. It’s still really hard to find the perfect shade for the right occasion. You need an everyday color and a going out color. Or various versions for the same occasions.

Because of this dilemma, I have a draw full of never been used lip products. Even if I like the color, they’re over two months old and now they’re no damn good anyway.

My Mom never buys lipstick. She just waits until Hadassah and I are getting rid of ours. Then she steals them. Chanel, YSL, Dior, Max Factor. She’s not picky. She takes ‘em. Bacteria and all.