How Lip Gloss Changed My Life

An awkward and ethnic teen, the author describes the moment—and the inappropriate compliment from an older man—that catapulted her from an uncomfortable adolescent to an exotic beauty.

I was 14 when I received my first compliment from a man. My friends and I had just piled into my friend’s father’s red Jaguar armed with our flea market treasures. In the late ’80s, girls on Long Island were big into frosted pink lip gloss, electric blue eyeliner and Aquanet hairspray. We rushed to pull out the tubes of shockingly white pink bliss—labeled simply “44”—and crowded around the rearview mirror. That 44 transformed my girlfriend’s lips into beautiful, delicate thin lines of pink frost.

When they moved out of the way to give me access to the mirror, I almost jumped out of my skin. As an awkward, olive-skinned girl with dramatically large features, way too much facial hair and full hips, glossing my lips with 44, the frosted pink wonder, was my defining adolescent moment. In my mind, 44 was the golden ticket out of my inner war with ethnic and ugly.

44 represented a notion of beauty and belonging that I did not feel naturally. 44 activated all I understood as American: wealth, beauty, and belonging. 44 provided social, cultural, and aesthetic access.

But, on that day, 44 failed me.

44, so delicate on my friends’ lips was a monstrosity on my own. You see, frosted pink glosses don’t do well on full lips. Well, they didn’t back in the ’80s when thin lips were in and ethnic was still exotic. Exotic had yet to reach the cover of any teen magazine in America.

I sank back in the plush leather seat, broken, my eyes burned with humiliation and my intestines coiled up in self-loathing. I looked hideous. I threw my hands up in defeat. “I have pork chop lips. I look like I just ate a bunch of greasy pork chops.” I was devastated. My girlfriends burst out laughing not really understanding how important 44 was to me. I felt doomed in my prison of freakishly full lips, squinty almond eyes, Grecian nose, and hairy upper lip. I always felt ugly, awkward, almost masculine—a monstrosity among my female peers. I had hips and a full ass. I was all wrong.

I was the last girl standing in my circle of friends who had not yet kissed a boy, so rumors had begun to spread that I was a lesbian. I felt undesirable all moments of the day. And, I dreaded living with this feeling for the rest of my life.

In a landscape where none of the girls looked like me, 44 represented my path to assimilation. In that Jaguar moment, 44 shut me out, slammed me right back to the awkward why-can’t-I-look-more-American wasteland that was my pubescent hell.

Then, my friend’s father looked at me through the review mirror and stated with encouraging candor, “Kat, you have blow job lips. They are hot! All men want blow job lips on a woman.”

Now, any confident teenaged girl would have been scared and disgusted. I knew what a blow job was. I knew which girls at school gave them. I knew that blow jobs in junior high school were hidden, delivered in the dark corners of the wrestling room, the back stairwell, in the bushes at an open house party. I knew the type of attention those who had cock-sucking skills in the 9th grade received from junior high and high school boys.

But, in that moment, I breathed a sigh of relief and thought, “Oh, thank God I have something boys like.” If 44 wasn’t going to give me my path to assimilation and beauty, damn straight my blow job lips would. Rather than be the American beauty, I would claim hot, steamy exotic as my own. Maybe I wasn’t a typical American beauty, but my friend’s father offered me an identity I could work with and really work.

That day, I left Pork Chop Lips in the Jaguar and slammed the door on 44 forever.

The next day, I walked a mile to the nearest drugstore. This was my own private mission. I did not need my 44 friends to come along. I steered clear of the lip glosses and frosted lip sticks, zeroed in on a toasty, red-brown lipstick by Revlon called Toast of New York and applied a rich layer on my lips.

Toast of New York was perfect! It was luscious, creamy, and defined my blowjob lips. Looking even fuller and more inviting than the lips on Revlon display, my lips now demanded attention.

Toast of New York made all my exotic beauty just pop. I’d never really seen me before. For the first time, I saw my dark, sultry eyes and high cheekbones. I saw how my small waist cascaded powerfully into my full, curved hips and sweet beckoning ass. And I stood tall at the sound of my low smoky voice. I didn’t just see my potential, I felt it.

I looked down at my very American jean skirt and pink turtleneck sweater, my white Keds and scrunched down pink E.G. socks and realized, this whole American thing was done for me.

I grabbed a black/brown kohl liner, some dark steamy shades of eyeshadow, and my new joy, Toast of New York, and headed to the checkout counter charged with a new-found confidence. Never again would I yearn to look and feel more American.

I didn’t need to belong.

Related Links:

Posted in Life and