Some of it's just fashion, right? Depending upon your age cohort, lipstick just may not be as popular as it has been, and as it will be. I do note far less advertisement for lipstick than one used to see. It's just not on the marketing agenda much, it seems.
But then again, "the marketing agenda" is probably not unrelated to everything else. The vicissitudes of cosmetics marketing may explain why we're seeing less lipstick, but how do we account for that vicissitude in particular?
(Can you tell I got a theory ...?)
I think that the present generation (don't ask me what I mean by "generation" because I'm not really sure. Maybe people under 50?) is underenthused about sex. I've often commented to friends that sexually charged theatre performances are a thing of the past. A play that has a great deal of sexual focus - say, "Streetcar Named Desire" - which actually brought about a conversation about this not long ago - is played with very little real fire. And that's true of a lot of erotic and sexual material in the arts these days. One can be romantic; one can be sincere; one can be authentic. In fact, those things are valued. But sexual? Romantically, sincerely, and authentically sexual? Not so much.
There are reasons for this, I think. For one thing, it's hard to be ironic and deeply sexual at the same time. I won't say impossible - though just off hand, I'm having a hard time thinking of an example in which it's been done - but it's really difficult. Moreover, it's hard to show merit - another thing we value highly these days - while being sexual. I think there's a near phobia of being considered less deserving, less meritorious than you might ... and when you are sexual - well - then you're sort of here with the rest of us mammals and such.
(I haven't forgotten that we're talking about lipstick here ... bear with me ...)
I think that this generation - nurtured on so much "sexual" or "adult-themed" material in their environment (I don't like to say "bombarded" - but that's what it's usually called) - has not, as some predicted and as some would still assert, become unnaturally hypersexual. I think the near opposite has happened.
The stuff they were fed, though, was unsatisfying. Indeed, it was often tawdry, vacuous stuff. "Junk food" would be the food analog, I think. And even as they knew, or were told, that the popular presentations of eros where trashy and not at all erotic; even as they knew, or were told, that sexuality is more stirring, more satisfying when it can be tied - if not in every thought, gesture, or encounter, then in the broader picture of one's life - to something with larger meaning and more humanity - even as they were told all this, they were getting, inevitably, turned on.
I mean, let's face it - trashy sex in media is hot!
But the longer term result, I think, is a generation that vaguely thinks less of itself when it is turned on, when the beauty in them responds to the beauty in "that" or in "that person" or "that story," when they are authentically aroused as human beings and in a distinctly sexual way.
Now ... what was I tawkn' 'bout? Oh, yeah - lipstick.
It's single most sexually suggestive of cosmetics, not counting scents (which have also, lately, been carrying less musk and more ... well ... "citrus" and "linens" ... sheesh.
It's a cosmetic which makes the labia - yes, I went there - look inflamed. And it draws ones eyes in that direction. And conjures up the image of a woman doing all the things women do when they get their lipstick just right: the gentle touch of the tip of the tongue in that problematic corner of the mouth ... the soft drawing in of the lips so that the pigment of the upper lip is joined to and mixed with the pigment on the lower lip ... you know: that vaguely "kissy" thing?
Even the slight extension of the neck, the upward tilt of the chin, to "present" the lips to the mirror ...
It's all very, very ... well ... erotic.
Which in our generation is sadly and very wrongly confused with "trashy," "inauthentic," "insincere," "lacking in merit" - and less fully human.
Our clothes, too, seem to want to say "no sex happenin' here, promise!" Sure, we'll flaunt a bulge in a pair of skinny jeans; we'll sport some cleavage; we'll do all that. But we'll do it partly because it's transgressive - and more because of that than in a real celebration of eros.
Fortunately, there seems to be a countervailing - but mirror-image - drive for all those things that seem to exclude sex: authenticity, sincerity, merit. So we forgo lipstick. It's "phony" or "trashy" ... and try to go it without the exaggerated labia. We don't dare present ourselves as touched with - kissed by - eros. But we want to be moved, and to be moving. The problem is, of course, that eros is what moves us.
And by eros, of course - I mean that scary, universal power that draws the Self to the Other, that connects "this" to "that," that creates the essential creative juice in individuals, and then draws it outward, toward the world, and lets it flow - and that holds the human world together.
Or would.
Now ... I'm nearly new to posting here. What do I do now? Proofread?
Nah.
