When I was a teenage girl, I wore Sillybandz stacked in a fluorescent clump on both wrists. My relatively minimalist beauty routine involved Neutrogena sunscreen, the Urban Decay Naked palette in various orgasmic shades, and black tightlined eyeliner. I would apply the eyeliner during my subway ride to school, glaring at nervous men who had the misfortune of looking at me for more than a second. Now in my mid-20s, I wouldn’t be able to do a wing if I were on stationary ground! Since then, I’ve cycled through tinted moisturizers and face wash, tubing mascara, and pale blushes. My makeup routine now is truly minimalist; I’d like to think of it as French, but it’s really just lazy. Things I liked then are obviously embarrassing now.
Except for one magical product: an $8 tube that has been a staple in my makeup bag since I first plucked it off the rack at C.O. Bigelow pharmacy on Sixth Avenue, between 8th and 9th Streets, wedged in among Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s $30 tortoiseshell headbands and $14 toothpastes. It’s simple. It is just a lip gloss, but it’s perfect.
The name of the product is deceptively generic: the C.O. Bigelow Mentha Lip Tint. There are many shades, but my favorite, plum mint, is a dark, sparkling brownish-purple. It gives the lips a sheer reddish-brown hue as if you had just bitten into a small ripe stone fruit. It’s not sticky; it doesn’t glue your lips shut. It’s not drippy — or drying. It’s high shine with a sweet mint flavor. While most scented lip products are a disaster, an anemic replica of nature, the mint in the C.O. Bigelow lip gloss is refreshing with a sweet taste that lingers like the taste of gum.
Lip gloss — like most early-2000s things — is having a revival, junked up with buzzwords like lip oil, peptides, plumping balm, and serum. Justice for real cheap lip gloss! Lip gloss shouldn’t be complicated or expensive; it should be flirty and sexy. It is more summertime than a bottle of Sun In. Lip gloss is a reminder that everything is embarrassing — and, actually, that’s what makes life fun!
Whenever my tube runs low, I’ll head down to Bigelow and walk through the dark-wood aisles, bypass the fancy makeup and decadent creams, and leave with one little nothing lip gloss tucked in my pocket. A lot of adulthood, I’ve found, is realizing that the things you liked as a girl are still pretty great. It could be time to try eyeliner again.
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