1920's theme just demands red lipstick, which I proudly recognized the day of the dance during my last-minute Walmart run. {I definitely spent more on last-minute Crap-I-Guess-I-Kind-of-Do-Care-If-He-Thinks-I'm-Pretty stuff than I do on food for two weeks. I kid you not. I guess I do care if he thinks I'm pretty.}
However, while I did recognize the necessity of red lipstick, I was unaware that there are about a million shades of "red," and I was unaware that the wrong shade could make one look pretty horrifying.
Which resulted in me purchasing a shade that looked like this on me.
I thought it looked outrageous and scary, but I also figured it might just be the fact that I'm used to my lips being a loud shade of NUDE. However, after sending the above picture to Sarah and Cassidy, my fears were confirmed. They both forbade me to show my face looking like that.
I decided to ignore the lipstick issue and do other things, like paint my toenails and watch Netflix. Of course, the minute I left the mirror, I forgot I had on lipstick, which resulted in lipstick. getting. everywhere.
Yeah. I was pretty sure that I was just not meant to wear lipstick {ever}, but Sarah and Mom both strongly urged me to go to the makeup counter at the mall and get help.
So I walked into the nearest Belk, feeling like the goth kid on a mission at a country club, and found an official-looking woman. I eloquently explained my predicament to her:
"Hey. I have a 20's themed dance tonight and I need a shade of red lipstick that doesn't look horrifying on me."
She looked at me kind of funny, but told me to sit down and she'd help me. She had an accent.
"I'm goink to show you a treek so you don't have to wipe off every time. O-kay?" She turned to a veritable drawer of lipstick tubes. "You're want a like a RICH red. O-kay."
She set five or six tubes on the counter and said, "Hold our your fingers. Facing up."
I gave her my hand and she marked each of my fingertips with a different lipstick. "Now holt each one up to your leeps in the mirror and see which a one you like a before you try on."
At least, NOW I know that's what she said. At the time, I was too busy staring blankly at my hand to hear her.
Okay, I KNOW these are different colors, I thought firmly. I WATCHED her use different tubes of lipstick. They look different in the tubes...
But thinking that didn't help. The bloody smears on my fingers looked exactly identical to each other. I felt like a total male.
I looked up at her and she repeated her statement about looking in the mirror with my fingers to my lips.
"Oh." I turned toward the vanity mirror to do what she said.
Guys, I don't know if you've ever tried this, but it is ridiculously difficult to turn your fingers like that. Just try it. Palm facing out, imagine you have lipstick smudges on your fingertips. Put your fingernail against your lips, one finger at a time. Don't even bother trying to get your ring finger without the pinky.
Yeah. So, that was awkward. And guess what? The colors looked exactly the same in the mirror, too, and I was pretty sure they also all looked like the original, horrifying shade I was trying to replace. But here I was, in this chair at Belk, with the judgmental foreign lady staring me down.
"Um, this one," I said, wiggling my pointer finger. {And what if I'd liked the one on my middle finger?}
She applied Pointer Tube to my lips. {If you ever danced as a child, you know that having someone apply lipstick on you is an awkward and frustrating thing for both parties.} When she was done, I looked in the mirror. She told me that was my shade.
It wasn't. It looked terrible.
Of course, how could I really be the judge of that? Clearly I was colorblind.
Still, I looked at the tubes rather than my fingertips and selected a deeper, less bright tube to work with. Makeup Lady went to help another customer.
This second, deeper shade also looked ridiculous on me, but I snapped a picture with my phone and sent it to Mom. She happily replied that it was my shade. When Makeup Lady returned to me, she also told me that it was my shade.
"That a one's gonna look the best on you," she said.
As opposed to the first one you said was "my shade"? I thought sarcastically. But whatever. I had the OK from Mom, and I was finished try to be a girl for the day.
When Makeup Lady rang up the lipstick {declaring that she was not the kind of saleslady who would tell me something looked good just to make a sale}, the cash register said over $30. Despite the fact that that's my grocery budget for like two weeks, I forked over the cash so I could gtfo of that store asap XD
Moral of this story: I'm not sure. Girls can be colorblind too? Don't trust makeup salesladies? Always ask your mom? Keep a savings account for unwanted beauty necessities?
Maybe it's "Even Stephanie will do girly things if she likes a guy enough."
*shrug* We'll go with that.
~Stephanie
well hey, bright side is that with a tube that expensive you will find reasons to use it and it will probably last forever before you have to even think about purchasing another red lipstick. haha
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