SHOCKING PINK

What is the word for wanting to buy Marilyn Monroe’s lipstick, asks Sue de Groot

HERE is, to my knowledge, no word for the macabre desire to possess objects once owned by a star who died young. I was going to say “died tragically”, but that is a terrible expression if you consider that every death must surely be a tragedy to someone. (Funny how you never hear the phrase “died comically”, not even when the corpse is that of a clown who drowned in a vat of custard after slipping on a banana peel.)

Schadenfreude, that fine German portmanteau word meaning to take joy in the misfortune of others, doesn’t quite cover the need to buy Marilyn Monroe’s used lipstick. Yet this is exactly what some collector of things touched by famous dead people will do when the preserved belongings of the former Norma Jeane Mortenson go on auction.

The lipstick was said to have been discovered by an auctioneer in a secret pocket of one of Marilyn’s many evening bags. My innate scepticism flares up here, but perhaps they have done DNA tests to prove that the lip-prints on the rim of the golden tube were made by Marilyn’s actual pout. The shade, released by Revlon in 1947, is “Bachelor’s Carnation”, and the item is expected to fetch the equivalent of R300 000 when it goes under the hammer in Los Angeles in November.

I’m not sure what a bachelor would be doing with a carnation, a flower traditionally pinned to the chest of a man about to be married, but cosmetic names do not have to make sense.

The carnation is a member of the dianthus family of flowers, which in the 16th century were commonly called “pinks”, which is where we obtained the colour code word for piglets, candyfloss, marshmallows and Barbie’s convertible.

A few centuries later, pinks acquired a less salubrious meaning as slang for recreational pills containing the opiate dipipanone hydrochloride, but let’s stick with flowers. The Online Etymology Dictionary reveals that “incarnation” was a 14th century word for what we now call pink, possibly derived from the Middle French carnation, which referred to a person’s complexion. In the 16th century the adjective “incarnadine” was used for pink, but just to confuse matters Shakespeare turned it into a verb and changed its hue when he had Macbeth say his blood would “the multitudinous seas incarnadine”, in other words, stain the ocean red.

To less complicated matters. Marilyn was fond of the colour pink, if the carnation-coloured lipstick is anything to go by (and if it really was hers). She also liked diamonds, which according to popular sayings are to girls as dogs are to men.

The only item containing real diamonds on the auction list is a dainty Swiss-made wristwatch. The auction house anticipates it will sell for R1.5-million.

No doubt whoever places the winning bid will be in the pink. This phrase, meaning “the pinnacle of excellence” dates back to the 16th century and according to The Phrase Finder probably had its origins in the first Queen Elizabeth’s liking for the flowers then called pinks and now called dianthuses. (Perhaps some horticulturalist can tell me why the plural is not dianthi.)

“In the pink” is much older than the expression “tickled pink”, which raised its rosy cheeks only in about 1910. Tickled pink sounds like it should have something to do with the blood rushing to the face of a wriggling person trying to escape the tickling fingers of another person, but “tickled” also means simply to be happy.

I hope whoever buys Marilyn’s lipstick will be happy. I’m sure whoever sells it will be. LS

The colour code word for piglets, candyfloss, marshmallows and Barbie’s convertible