LipStick It Couture Du Jour
Because Extraordinary Times Require Extraordinary Adornment
By Tracy Rose Stamper
Welcome to RevlOff’s Lip Couture Counter, where science blends with art, topped off with attitude, to bring you colors to carry you through dizzying days.
Our makeup counter’s mission is to challenge the slippery slope into post-truth society. By offering an honest line of honest products, we aim to create an oasis in this world gone off its axis. Like you, we wouldn’t have made it this far without attitude, an ingredient as important as science and art. Sometimes, attitude shows up as color play therapy. Other times, admittedly, we’re throwing shade. Because today’s many shades of fustercluck require many shades of lip armor.
With science under attack, we begin with highlighting our Scintillating Lip Science Line. Our distinct shades—Moderna Woman, Pfizer Fly, J&J Vim&Vigor Violet, and Fully Vixenated—are recognizable, helping take the guesswork out of navigating this partially vaccinated world. Thirty-nine percent of proceeds from this line go towards public health education.
Our Levity Line is curated for comic relief: Frosted Snowflake, Commie Bastard Berry, Cashmere Coastal Elite Crème, Scintillating Socialist, Luscious Lefty Lavendar Lustre, Flaming Liberal Lilac, Bleeding Heart Burgundy, and Radical Rosé. You will be called all the above. May as well dress it up!
Our LipStick It line’s Pop Off Pink, Ragin’ Red, and Apoplectic Purple coordinate well with feeling feisty. Piehole Plum works wonders when venturing places where you’ll wish to tell folks to shut it. Warm, inviting Pumpkin Smasher Spice is popular on Wednesdays when we smash the patriarchy. Another smashing shade is Vagalante Lavender. (We’ve been asked if that’s a typo. No, it’s not.) Our newest addition, Pro-Roe, is a bold blood red. Enough said.
Lip Armor Liquid Courage Collection comes to the rescue with extra oomph! Impressive science merges a lip stain offering 8-hour staying power with a satiny liquid look. These blends have you covered across the board, from situations where it’s best to just walk away, to those times when you’ll have to say something to maintain any semblance of self-respect. Talk for 8 hours straight ‘til you’re blue in the face, with lips remaining radiant, although we don’t recommend wasting breath trying to change minds committed to closure. Red&White&True, Pink Patriot, and Coral Compass encourage standing for what is real and right. Think insurrectionist thugs eager to decapitate politicians, thus threatening our democracy’s very survival. Consider this collection your armor against gaslighting claims that what you saw didn’t happen.
Lip Armor Liquid Courage Collection mainstays are Crimson Courage and Seeing Red. These trying days require courage. Liberty Lover Lapis invites speaking the truth, because asserting individual liberties can sometimes adversely affect the collective, and empathy always matters. True Blue is for those of us who have earnestly spent six plus years trying to understand hearts of loved ones living in an entirely different world, despite residing mere miles away. Googling “cognitive dissonance” is your clue that this one’s for you. Striking shades draw foci to lips, away from puffy eyes. We’ve all had moments of dissolving into tears, leaving us looking as weary as we feel.
On Second Thought All-Out Orange is our collaboration with the common sense gun safety movement. With a nod to the Second Amendment and law-abiding citizens’ rights to own guns, this also represents the rights of our children to simply survive an America riddled with epidemic gun violence. Deep orange emboldens the user to take on stale assertions that “the government’s coming to take away your guns.”
Our Glow-Getter Glam Line celebrates bright spots with shimmering finishes. We have Yes We Candied Plum, Georgia Peach, Blunami, and V(I)P Pearlescent, in honor of our first POC and woman VP. We wish to expand this line in years to come.
Our True Colors Collection reflects the revealing of folks’ true colors. Spiraling up each tube are the words: “We’re only going to get browner and queerer and witchier and louder and stronger and prouder (author unknown).” Top-selling Browner is a rich maroon that beautifully celebrates the browning skin tone of our country’s trajectory. Black Sheep comes with a gift enclosure that reads: “For the black sheep of families dangerously close to falling off the edge of their flat earth if they lean the tiniest bit further right.” Pussy Hat Pink is quite popular. Pride gloss features rainbow sparkles. #RubySlipperRed represents the dreams of a compassionate homeland that lives up to its ideals of democracy, equity, and unity for all.
Finally, for the end of those days that last for months, we have our Lip Therapy Line. Designed as therapeutic balms to soothe and restore lips overnight, many customers reach for these around the clock. One of our regulars dubs our therapeutics as the “Homebody Cluster,” since it feels less lonely given today’s isolating climate.
Whether staying home or venturing out into these most curious times, RevlOff has you covered. Though this concludes our makeup bar tour, it is just the beginning of the important work we will do, alongside customers like you, doing right by the world.
To thank you for being part of a bright future, our complimentary gift is a tube of bRight Side of History. Apply liberally.”
Tracy Rose Stamper dances with words. Her recently acquired middle name is the most significant word she has written lately during these days asking us to rise. She lives in a home on a hill in St. Louis with two beloved humans, two rescue beagle boys, and two whimsical wind sculptures. She is a contributing author of Anna Linder’s ‘The Book of Emotions,’ and has had work appear in New Feathers Anthology, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts, Dime Show Review, Drunk Monkeys, and borrowed solace, among others. You can find her dancing with words at Facebook.
Photo credit: he who would be lost via a Creative Commons license.
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