Bright red lipstick
Today I put on my best bright red lipstick to sit about the house and study. I didn’t take a photo, I didn’t post it anywhere, but I did it for me. It made me feel pretty, and powerful, and creative at the same time.
I used to think that being feminine or doing typically feminine things such as wearing bright red lipstick and painting my nails made me weak. I don’t really know why. Perhaps it was because as a closet tomboy I used to associate those things with the girls at school who used to ask me for help with their maths homework. The juxtaposition to that was that at some point in time, I became one of those girls in my desperate attempt to fit in. Highschool, or let’s say, middle school, those angsty 6-9 years were a wild time indeed, but I digress.
See the beautiful thing here is that I no longer feel like as though I need to pick a side as I did back then. I can be pretty and wear red lipstick, and be smart, and hardworking and creative and like sport and whatever the fuck else I want to be. That’s where the power lies. That wearing red lipstick doesn’t make me anything, it doesn’t put me in a box because at least in my mind, the box no longer exists; it is one that I created that I have now freed myself from.
So, I will continue to sit here in my bright red lipstick as I draft a report for an assignment in my Masters program that I worked dam hard to get into and I will not question, or answer to anyone (including myself) who asks me why the fuck I’m doing what I am.
