Sarah Palin can’t have my lipstick. She can’t take my right to the word or use it against me, and she certainly can’t copyright any metaphor using the word.
Lipstick is such a great word. It immediately calls up a certain picture, both of the object itself and of a lipsticked woman, and even though lipstick comes in many colors, somehow it always comes out red in my mind.
I’ve spent hour searching for the perfect red lipstick. Emma Forrest named a novel after the perfect lip color. Red lipstick is not common any longer, and thus it now always signifies. It may read “slutty” to some and “retro” to others, but it is usually sexual, the assumption.
Mostly I wear lipgloss, because lipstick is a commitment. You can’t kiss it off without leaving your mark all over your lover–and that’s the way I like it. If you’re planning on kissing, you can either leave off the lipstick–a clear invite–or apply it perfectly, daring them to cross that line, mess it up, brand themselves with your lipstick, mark themselves as yours.
Sarah Palin doesn’t even wear that kind of lipstick. She just uses it as a metaphor when she wants to (”what’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?”) and then her crew turns it around and claims that Obama’s being sexist? Not so much.
Lipstick doesn’t just signify woman in Sarah Palin’s claims–it now signifies her. Well, I refuse to think of her when I put on my lipstick in the morning. I prefer to think about Clara Bow, Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, Madonna, Courtney Love, and me.
According to Linda Scott in Fresh Lipstick, the modern makeup trends in the U.S. started with the growth of the movie industry and spread to independent young women. Lipstick, therefore, started as a signifier of the independent woman, and I like keeping it that way.
And just for fun: NPR puts actual lipstick on an actual pig.
Originally from “Hockey Town” (Detroit) and a four generation hockey family…when I heard Palin say what she did, it pi@@sed me off big time! I did a post titled…”A Hockey Town Family”
It appears that the RNC now seem to think they “own” that statement as evidenced in their scorn at our next president…Barack Obama. It was funny in a way…because as soon as I heard Senator Obama say “You can put lipstick on a pig…but it’s still a pig”…I remembered hearing John Mc Cain saying that.
I should say, too…that at one time I had been a staunch Republican…until I had one of those rare, “AH HA!” life changine moments…properly called ‘Transformative Learning’.
I know how the RNC think, process information and supress information.
Another wonderful post!
Michelle