Red Lipstick

Just the other day, my mother made a comment to me about her feelings of disappointment upon looking at my “List of Things I Love” that is posted on my personal blog-site. Two words were missing, “Red Lipstick”. I made a mental note to myself to add it to the list the next time I wrote a blog and then went about my normal day in my beloved college town.

It wasn’t even two hours later that a former sorority sister made the comment that something about me was different. In my head I thought, she must notice my recent weight loss or my new highlights in my hair. The dear, bubbly Tri-Delta sister shocked me with the eerily similar comment I had just talked with Mother about earlier.

“You haven’t been wearing your red lipstick! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without some shade of red lipstick on! That’s like your thing!” she said.

For twenty-two years I’ve heard that I was ‘my mother’s clone’. No matter if I was in a bikini in Myrtle Beach, a prom dress in my small, Florida home-town, or at a college cocktail party in Alabama, pictures proved this to be true – I looked a lot like that woman.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that this similar ‘look’ that my mother and I shared might have something to do with our full and painted lips. Not all of it had to do with our love for shades of crimson, red, and coral to outline our smiles. We both have that bold, ‘maybe she’s born with it’, brown-eyed girl, type of attitude that goes hand in hand with the devil-red pout.

This new kind of ‘Southern Girl’ that my mother and I depict is that of Scarlett O’hara, and even when red lips weren’t on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and Glamour magazine we wore it and frankly, my dear, we didn’t give a damn.

My blog is titled “The Other Sister” for no other reason than the undeniable fact that I am my sister’s opposite. However, like all girls who were raised south of the Mason-Dixon Line, we shared memories far more intimate than of you and your best friend. From barefoot children catching fire-flies in the Carolinas, to holding one another’s hand in The First Baptist Church’s baptismal pool, and fighting like the devil to be the strong one so the other could have a couple of minutes to cry when we waited for Daddy’s test results at the cancer center in Houston, we taught each other about life, love, and friendship in the way only sisters can do.

Just keep in mind she doesn’t own a single tube of red lipstick. We’re close; but still opposite.

Starting in my early toddler years, my mother had to hide her lipsticks from me because I would take it upon myself to exhibit my sneakiness and get into a mess of fire-engine red and deep crimson smears all over my hand-smocked dresses and then-innocent little face. I couldn’t wait until I was allowed to wear lipstick, seriously, to sport my inner-attitude rather than as a play prop for playing dress-up or when I was on stage for a dance recital. Once adolescence hit and my mother gave me the ‘go’ for permission to make myself up on my own – it was game over: Operation Red Lipstick was on.

My sister, as everyone speculated from the start and now knows for a fact, is my opposite. So, the majority of our petty arguments during those teenage years were about me ‘bossing her around’ to put some color on those bare lips or ‘her not trusting me’ that I knew what I was talking about.

Countless times I can remember rushing out the door and into the car to church when Mom, in the backseat, yells “Darling, let me have some of that lipstick you have on!” Like a routine, my sister and I would dig in my duffel-size purse (just like my mothers, of course) to each pull out a handful of lipsticks of all shapes, sizes, and colors. We’d knowingly hand her the ‘red-est’ shade, she’d slap some on and then demand that my sister do the same. (I had already spent most the morning perfecting my Sunday appropriate shade of red to match whatever sundress I was wearing). My sister’s refusal to do so was like a broken record. This was a regular for us; a petty conversation between mother and daughters that happened over and over again – a Sunday morning ritual almost as routine as singing ‘Amazing Grace’ and long naps after lunch.

Maybe a little bit about the person we really are can be described in the color we prefer on our lips. My sister, content with a tube of chap-stick or a neutral colored gloss, is just that. If her lips are chapped, well, she’d put chaptick on. If there’s a big enough reason for anything else, a little gloss will do. She is beautifully plain-Jane. She’s a hint of bronzer, a touch of mascara, and one of those naturally pretty girls. She’s subtle, patient, compassionate, quiet, and no need for any added bedazzling. If she were a dress then she would be comfortable, linen, flowing in a summer breeze, and looking best when paired with husband and barefoot kids on a Carolina shore. If she were a drink, she’d be hand-squeezed lemonade or sweet tea from a Mason jar in the summer or a comforting cup of hot-chocolate in the winter. If she were anything other than hospitable, easy-going, and laid-back, then she wouldn’t be my sister.

I, on the other hand, complete my pouty-lipped look with lip liner, lipstick (crème, matte, glossy, always red) and a lip-plumper on top to keep them guessing if I’ve had them painfully stuck with a needle or if twenty-two years of playing with every lipstick from the drugstore to Bloomingdales has made me quite the expert. I’m the bronzing, rouge-wearing, curl my lashes before my two types of mascara go on, colored eye-liner type. There’s the day-time me, and the night-time me. Every picture I’m in I look strangely different – always portraying the mood I’m in at the time. If I were a dress, it’d be red or black, satin, horribly uncomfortable, but too stubborn to admit it. I’d have to be altered, taken in, seams realigned – always picky, never perfect, and hardly content. If I were a drink I’d be a martini with the flavor depending on my attitude or mood. As my sister would be the Charleston type, I’d be the New Orleans, Dallas, or Atlanta type. Somewhere hot-tempered and spicy, with enough to do to avoid the slightest feeling of boredom. If I were anything other than complicated, hard to please, and constantly changing my mind, I wouldn’t be me.

I guess just like the red lipstick I carry with me, is the bold, brutally honest, ‘hey there, look at me!’ attitude I’ve carried with me my whole life.

Some days I wake up and am jealous of the girl who doesn’t need it. Then, with the blot of a handkerchief before walking out the door in my red lipstick, I remember just how fun it is to make a mess with make-up. I smile giving a silent ‘Thank Ya!’ to the bold, Southern woman that raised me; and with a tube of lipstick prove that growing up doesn’t change everything…

Some things you are just born with!