Lipstick: Color me made up

Happy National Lipstick Day! Be like the Father of our country and slather some on to celebrate! Say whaa-a?

Yep. It’s rumored that ol’ George Washington himself hit the drugstore makeup counter (or the 18th-century equivalent thereof) and bought a tube or two to add a bit of color to his smackers.

Such is the claim at the website Nationaldaycalendar.com, which includes a short blurb on National Lipstick Day — July 29.

I think it’s fitting to have a day to honor the most convenient cosmetic enabling a woman to says she’s made up when she doesn’t feel like putting on any dang thing else.

Or perhaps it’s a time to be annoyed about having to constantly reapply lipstick after eating it off your lips. Or annoyed over broken, melted or crushed lipstick smeared all over the bottom of your purse. Maybe it’s a day to solemnly remember that lipstick can poison you.

Back to the upside, you can always celebrate the fact that lipstick is no longer made from bugs, that you can wear red lipstick without being considered a witch or a woman of easy virtue, and that none other than Winston Churchill would approve of your whipping out that little tube of color.

Lipstick has come a long way from what it was when Toddler Me got my first spanking after climbing on my mother’s dresser, smearing her makeup on my face and removing and discarding my soiled diaper to boost the visual results. From there came my fascination with the tiny mini-lipstick samples acquired by older female relatives. Fast-forward to the teen years, when I celebrated the acquisition of Mom’s permission to wear makeup by wearing way too much of it in the wrong shades … lipstick especially.

Throw in my adult-years hunts for the perfect bluish-red lipstick and and my acquisition of an exciting new lipstick that always seemed to coincide with having my nails done in a clashing shade. And that brings us to today, when I apply lip color in the morning, get all over my coffee cup and by noon don’t care whether I’m still wearing it or not.

Whatever our struggles, we lipstick wearers are following a tradition that goes back centuries. “The ancient Mayans, ancient Sumerians, aboriginal tribes in Australia, and even the famous Cleopatra rocked a signature shade,” reveals a similar site, Nationaltoday.com. And today,

we risk little more than disparaging comments on Instagram for our lipstick choices, rather than loss of reputation — or worse — for wearing the stuff at all. According to the National Day Calendar website, the “British Parliament banned it in 1770, calling it a devilish attempt to trick men into marriage. They likened it to witchcraft.” According to other online features, Queen Elizabeth I liked her lipstick, while Queen Victoria thought it, and/or makeup in general, “impolite.”

Other fun factoids on the National Day Calendar site: “Winston Churchill thought it was an excellent morale booster during World War II.”

The fact that Adolf Hitler was said to have hated red lipstick with a passion was an excellent red lipstick sale booster, according to other online sources.

Today, lipstick doesn’t just make your mouth some impractical color anymore. It has various finishes — matte, sheer, cream, frosted, gloss, satin … heck, polyester. And it doesn’t just color your lips; it moisturizes your lips. Plumps your lips. Stains your lips to keep the color from being gone by lunchtime. (Good luck getting lip stain off, even with steel wool.)

According to National Today, lipstick even improves your confidence. And your posture. And gets you perceived as more capable and reliable! And lipstick is made of better ingredients: The Sumerians

made it from crushed gemstones in 4000 B.C. Matter of fact, substances to which ancient lipstick makers turned to included “everything from crushed beetles to berries to ground up fish scales mixed with oil.”

However, it may not be safer ingredients. Lead, chromium, and parabens have reportedly been found in a few lipsticks and online articles warn wearers to buy the quality stuff and not reapply it

a zillion times a day.

But this being National Lipstick Day, I guess it’s OK to come down on the side of celebration. Get your lipsticks out and enjoy! Go get yourself a new tube after church! Make it Razorback red!

Hey, there may even be some George Washington (or Churchill) lipstick sales out there.