Lipstick circa 1950

Scarlet lipstick. That was the hallmark of the woman of the fifties. Fire-hot, glistening mouths were visible from blocks away. Words were etched in bloody frames, too often appropriate to the gossipy topics their owners’ loved.

In that time, lips moved front and centre, out of proportion in otherwise bland, Ivory soap-scrubbed faces. No one wore eye shadow or mascara aside from actresses, dancers or ladies of the night and other persons of scandalous intent.

Lipstick smeared teeth with coagulated cherry streaks were the trade mark of the honest woman too busy and distracted with children to spend the time blotting and powdering the greasy stuff.

On Sundays, churches were filled with vampire teeth not belonging to the damned but to the saintly. How unsettling it was for the children to see ancient ladies grinning with radish-tipped dentures.

What an odd sense of propriety these crimson mouthed matrons had. Did they not realise that ruby lips were intended to entice men with visible reproduction of the engorged dark peony coloured labia slick with the want of sex? It’s highly unlikely that they figured it out but Charles Revlon understood and built an empire on the mimicry of blood filled genitalia.

Image is courtesy of Artist Sheila Norgate.