Hi, thanks for being here. This is a paid-subscribers only essay inspired by Annie Hamilton’s recent essay in The Strategist, which you can access by upgrading your subscription or with a 7-day free trial. xoxo.
+
While I’m packing for my weekend trip, I unearth a tube of ELF Lip Plumping Gloss. Jess sent it to me over a year ago. I ripped open the package at my desk, sampling each product without a mirror or reading the instructions. After I applied the lip gloss, I was confused why it stung so much. I read the label and understood why. It was supposed to give me bigger lips. I knew about the desirability of lips. I imagined an hour would pass and I’d look in the mirror to see Kylie Jenner looking back at me. It wasn’t so. I did notice a slight puff, but dismissed it as psychosomatic.
One thing about me is that I like to push products past their expiry because some weeks go by where I don’t feel much and I need to feel something, even if that is bodily distress. Caitlin sends me Annie Hamilton’s essay “My Week with a No-Needles Lip Filler.” Unfortunately I identified with a lot of things in the essay, despite Twitter critics calling it unhinged. My upper lip is also nonexistent when I smile. I also am a fool for love. I also have trouble with bathroom schedules while traveling. I also will try anything once. I also believe I can make people love me who won’t ever.
I decide to repeat her experiment for replicable data. My experiment does have some amendments. First, I’ll try it for the weekend rather than the week because I’m lazy and I want to write this essay. Second, the price difference between her product and mine is a difference of about $138 dollars plus tax. I also am not (currently) trying to win over a love interest with multiple lovers. There’s a part of me that hopes the lip gloss will lure a new crush into my life, but then again, it didn’t turn out well for Annie, so maybe that’s not the result I want. I don’t know this yet, but by the weekend’s end, I’ll have taken hardly any photos of myself wearing the gloss.
Historically, I’m not really a makeup girl. That sounds very pick-me of me, but I just never felt the thrill of it. An ambient dread tends to run through me when I step foot into Sephora. I’m terrible at applying it, particularly lipstick. Usually it ends up smeared on my Bugs Bunny-reminiscent front teeth. I am reverent towards, and a little afraid of, makeup’s power. Cleopatra’s was filled with snake venom. In fifth grade as the girls swiped mascara onto each other’s lashes, my quasi-bully Breanna told me that little bugs lived in mascara tubes. This comment effectively kept me mascara-free for a couple years. My nubby eyelashes didn’t faze me until a high school bully asked me if I ever considered trying to look more feminine by wearing eye makeup.
This weekend is going to be a corner turned. I tuck the lip gloss into my utterly destroyed Shakespeare & Company tote bag. I’ve over packed as usual. I set my alarm for 8 am, a smudge of the gloss on my pillow in the morning.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to arbiter of distaste to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.