Lipstick Is Power

Thousands of years ago
Cleopatra crushed beetles for a red lip potion.
Her words, coming from a red-rimmed mouth, spoke power.

Suffragettes applied bold red to their lips
Symbolizing strength, daring, and grit.

Women, skeletons of skin and bone when liberated
From concentration camps, loved the lipstick they received--
A symbol of freedom, independence, and resilience
Lipstick: a dream of a new life.

During the age of glamour
Marilyn Monroe’s mouth gleamed cherry red.
What were her lips saying to women of the fifties?
We are beautiful? Confident? Passionate? Lovable?
Please want me? Please need me? Kiss me.

Lipstick rimmed wine glasses,
Napkins smudged with scarlet ghosts of lips,
Cigarettes, red-rimmed filters burned in ash trays,
Lipsticked insults scrawled on bathroom walls,
“Lipstick on your collar told a tale on you,” blared from jukeboxes.

Housewives in fluffy pink slippers
And curlers in their hair
Carefully crayoned ruby lipstick on their mouths
Before walking outside
To pick up the morning paper on the driveway.

Today many women leaders wear bright red lipstick.
Think the newest Supreme Court Justice,
Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Think Alexandria O. in congress.
Bold Red lipstick: A symbol of power
Embedded in Women’s Rights.

My first lipstick was a secret
Kept hidden under gym clothes in my school locker.
The creamy glossy glow of the Tangee brand,
The favorite of teens,
Put on in the school restroom
Felt daring.

I amassed a lipstick color collection: Love that Red,
Certainly Red, Fire and Ice, He Loves Red,
In the Pink of Love, and Bed of Roses.

As the rounded soft bullet tip glossed over my lips,
It was like I was leaving home and ditching all the rules.
Like freedom. Like magic.