Violet Vixen
The first lipstick I ever wore I didn’t wear at all. Made of plastic and in a pretend makeup kit, the miniature copy of the real thing had an angled tip of red permanently positioned just above the tube. I sat in front of a white curved make-up table pressing it to my lips, the imaginary pigment satisfying enough for a five-year-old girl in a long pink nightgown.
Flavored lip gloss, first available from Bonnie Bell in the early seventies, left a sticky-sweet, glittering smear across my teenaged mouth. It smelled of bubblegum, cotton candy, and artificial strawberries. In college, after outgrowing lip gloss, I added lipstick to the list of things antithetical to my values and my opposition to the patriarchy. I wasn’t interested in attracting men, even less interested in performing for them. My friends and I joked that make-up was merely a technique for making your face appear post-orgasmic, somehow aroused and presented for men’s pleasure.
In my thirties, I let go of my opposition to lipstick, deciding it was probably the weakest tool of the patriarchy at best. Now, I love the glide of the colored wax and the feeling of the sloped surface across my lips. The satisfying rituals of lipstick draw me to the mirror—sliding off the cap, twisting the tube, and holding it in front of my lips for a moment, my pouting mouth slightly open.
I went shopping for a lipstick around the corner from the coffee shop where I wrote one morning. I looked through the dark plums, barely-there nudes, wet look, glossy, and matte shades with names like Lust for Blush, Violet Vixen, and Mesmerizing Magenta. I considered Violet Vixen, one of the matte shades, but put it back on the shelf, certain that I didn’t have the nerve to wear it.
I bought the Maybelline Stay Exceptional, #25 from the Super Stay Ink Crayon line. It cost $10.29 for a slim long tube with a hard case in the same color as the lipstick. The lipstick itself, shaped like a thin crayon or a chunky colored pencil, was softer than it looked, with a tip sharp enough for lining my lips before filling them in. I took a sip of coffee after applying it and left a pink imprint of my lower lip on the white rim of the cup. So much for super stay. I pressed my mouth against the back of the store receipt leaving the impression of both my lips.
The lipsticks I choose tend towards soft pinks that blend with my skin tone. Sometimes I want to be the sort of woman who wears lipstick in vivid reds or bright purples, with noisy ample pigment, the bright audacious and capacious lipstick transforming me into someone who takes up the whole room. I’m uncertain, though, about my desire for that amount of attention, so I stick with the pinks. Sometimes I wear Revlon #002 Pink Pout. The black tube has a gold-colored band around the middle and more gold is revealed underneath when I slip off the cap with a quiet whoosh. The soft matte shade almost matches my lips. I also carry Burt’s Bees tinted lip balm, Pink Blossom, in my purse. More acquiescence than audacity.
Who might I be wearing Violet Vixen across my lips? Certainly not a person schlepping around my house in black sweatpants. I don’t think I would pair Violet Vixen with a white sports bra and a gray t-shirt. Instead, I might wear my dark wash jeans with a sheer black shirt, and open-toed shoes with heels. Where am I going with my vixen lips and what am I doing when I get there? Perhaps the sophisticated coffee shop across from the Boston Common where I leave my lip imprint on a white espresso cup. Or in the evening, at a rooftop bar, my Violet Vixen remains on the rim of a champagne glass.
Violet Vixen implies power and sexuality, traits that feel more private than public, containing something I both distrust and crave. A vixen is intriguing, sexual, perhaps uncaring, out to get what she wants, definitely not for the pleasure or needs of men, although men may think that a vixen is there for them. Vixens, like the female foxes they are named for, are sly and devious. A vixen is sometimes described as a shrew, another animal references to women who are difficult, but desired. Shakespeare wanted the shrew tamed and when his play was turned into a musical in the 1950s, the title transformed into Kiss Me Kate. I suspect Kate wore lipstick, but by the end I bet she wasn’t wearing Violet Vixen.
There’s nothing sexual or sinful about a lipstick named Stay Exceptional. In fact, all of the Super Stay Ink Crayon shades have names that suggest achievement or self-care. There’s Run the World, a deep pink shade; Live on the Edge, a plum shade with a hint of brown; and Talk the Talk, a nude shade. The most daring name, Forget the Rules, is a dark purple.
I wonder if the shades in the Stay Exceptional line are designed as the new symbols of women’s equality, rebellion, and liberation. Perhaps if I had known that lipstick had some of its roots in opposing sexism, I might have worn it sooner. Early women’s rights activists wore red lipstick to intimidate men and the women who marched for the right to vote wore it as well. Elizabeth Arden, the young founder of a new cosmetics company, distributed tubes of red lipstick in New York City to the marching suffragists.
Would I have worn bright red lipstick if I had been around during World War II? It became popular at that time because, allegedly, Hitler hated red lipstick. Perhaps I would have tried Montezuma Red worn by American servicewomen along with matching nail polish. Wondering about this link between lipstick and activism, I searched for film clips of women wearing lipstick in the 1940s but became entranced by Rosie the Riveter makeup tutorial on YouTube. The brunette model with a heart shaped face used Buxom Plump Liner in a shade called Cloak and Dagger and filled in her lips with Toxic Cherry Big and Sexy lipstick.
Both of my grandmothers wore lipstick. My mom’s mother wore delicate shades of pink, dainty and feminine. My dad’s mom leaned in my direction, wearing sturdy shades to enhance, rather than announce her lips. She always carried a tube in her purse, and after a meal at a restaurant, would say, “I’ve eaten my lipstick off again,” pulling a compact out of her bag, holding the small round mirror in front of her face, and applying a couple of layers of lipstick. She might swipe her face quickly with the pressed powder using the squishy sponge, and then click the compact closed.
When my mom died, I took a few items of her clothing home after my sisters and I had cleared out her closets. I wore her rust and turquoise ankle-length fabric coat for the first time during a cool fall day in Boston. When I reached in the pocket, I found a tube of lipstick. The container was rectangular with a translucent rose-colored case around the silver tube holding the lipstick. The brand was Maybelline from the Color Sensational line, and the shade was #730, Coral Gleam. There wasn’t too much left of the lipstick. I had to twist it all the way to see the small, slanted edge that once touched my mother’s lips.
I keep my mom’s lipstick in the bottom drawer of my jewelry box nestled with other sacred traces of my past. Occasionally I take it out and turn the square of silver at the base and look at the slim remains, inhaling its sweet odor. My mom didn’t wear a lot of make-up — a thin layer of foundation from a triangular prism shaped bottle, applied in upward strokes starting just below her chin. She swept rouge across her high cheekbones with the feathery flat brush that came in the compact, and applying her Coral Gleam lipstick, she leaned closer to the mirror, opening her mouth slightly, moving it across her lips, the odor drifting down to me, faintly baby powder sweet, but with a tiny tinge of melted candle wax.
Recently, I ordered lipstick primer, designed to go under regular lipstick, from Guerlain, a French cosmetics company, the first to manufacture lipstick commercially. It cost three times the price of any lipstick I ever bought and arrived in a thick white paper container, embossed with a gold Guerlain-Paris-1828 logo, a delicate bee in the center of the circle of words. The package itself so beautiful that I didn’t want to open it, but when I did, I found my lipstick and the sample products they sent me as a first-time customer, in a white cloth bag, again embossed with the gold logo. The receipt was in a thick gold envelope. I didn’t press my lipsticked mouth against it.
The next time I bought lipstick I bravely chose Clinique’s Different Grape. Was I edging myself closer to violet? I applied my lipstick primer first, like a housepainter preparing the surface. Then I opened the purply-brown tube of Different Grape. It was closer to the color of my lips than I imagined. I moved the angled waxy surface across my lips and stood back looking in the mirror. Different Grape didn’t give me that sallow look that some reds or orangey pinks do. Natural enough, but also it was obvious I was wearing lipstick. It has become my favorite shade.
A friend said to me, “You know, Zoom will apply your lipstick for you. You choose a color in the settings.” We experimented with it, playing with different shades and intensities. I left the settings on for a while, arriving to meetings with my lipstick automatically applied, but there’s no joy in zoom lipstick. No opening of the dark tube with a gold band across the middle. No gently turning the lipstick up and watching the angled tip reach just above the end of the tube. No sweep of color across the lips. No sweet waxy smell. No imprint of your lips across the back of a receipt.
I finally bought the Violet Vixen. The translucent indigo tube, the same shape and size as my mom’s lipstick, hid the color of the lipstick inside, #830 from the Bold/Audacieux line. The lipstick color looked more like artificial grape than the sultry, sexy shade I had imagined. I twisted the bottom of the silver tube, leaned towards the mirror, and held the lipstick against my mouth. It was uneven and splotchy, and I needed several layers of the too waxy lipstick to get my lips a consistent purple. My wife walked into the bathroom to find me looking in the mirror. I pressed my vixen mouth against hers and left a stain of purple across her cupid bow lips.
Beeper Peddle is a writer and healer living on the East Coast. She lives with her partner and their beloved soul puppy. Beeper writes about sorrows, lies, and deep loves. When you read her work, you will dip down into her heart and end up in all manner of body parts. Should you find yourself reflected in these words, it is merely coincidence; however, it does not surprise her you share the same heart. Find her at bethpeddle.com and @beeperpeddle on Twitter and Instagram
Judy McClure (she/her) is a Boston based writer whose work focuses on relationships, identity, nature, and education. Her writing is at Chautauqua, WBUR’s Edify, 805LitMag, and HerStry. She is the winner of the 2021 Friends of the Chautauqua Writers’ Center prose contest and is a graduate of Grub Street’s Essay Incubator. She co-owns Rozzie Bound Co-op Bookstore and lives in Boston with her wife and her dog Rosy.
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