meish dot org: life, unfolding

Queueing in the deli at lunchtime (mozarella and avocado on lavash bread, since you ask) I was suddenly aware that the mouths of all the women around me were awash in a giant slick of lip-gloss. Not lipstick. Not colour. But sticky, semi-transparent or slightly-coloured wet-look gloss, making each mouth look dripping and wet and, basically, ready for anything.

Don’t get me wrong – I have lip-gloss too (blame Cat Deeley), but I tend not to think about it as a fashion thing – it’s less of a hassle than lipstick, and more interesting than blisteze. But you know what? I’d never really considered the impact of the female mouth, painted wet, until I looked around the overheated deli and saw at least ten women, hungry and flushed and moist-mouthed. Have I accidentally stepped into the set of Heather does Hammersmith? How odd.

Lip gloss these days doesn’t taste nearly as good as it did when I got my first tube in about 1984 – strawberry flavour, and so sticky you had to keep your mouth open all day, or else your lips would clamp together. Oh, and throughout the day, you’d gather random flotsam and jetsam across the bottom half of your face – hair, crumbs, dust, insects, whatever – as the process of living spread your attempt at glamour across your face.

There was another product around back then – I’m not sure it’s even legal to make it anymore (there was probably a warning on the back, like with bottles of DEET – “may be harmful to fish”) – called Lip-Kote or something similar. It came in a clear glass vial with a tiny brush, and you were supposed to paint it onto your lips to fix your lipstick firmly in place throughout the day (“Eat! Drink! Kiss!”). It stung like crazy – I do remember that. You had to paint it on, a sort of varnish for your face, and then hang with your mouth open while it dried, looking like exactly the kind of dumbass you were for bothering to do it in the first place. Why did anyone bother?

I don’t remember ever being able to wear it properly, though – aside from having to wash it off after five minutes because it stung too much and I was bored of holding my mouth open, at eleven, what use did I really have for lipstick-fixative, apart from contraband experimentation in a home where Barbies were forbidden and Greenham was considered a holiday destination?