Initially,
the colour or the shade did not matter.
Sitting by the windowpane on an
extremely cold Wednesday morning, my eyes are set into an apertural vision
towards my male Creative Writing professor when I was distracted by a pleasing
visual sensation somewhere along 10:00 [my eyes being the point of reference].
My classmate, Taz, was positioned in a very eye-catching spot in the room,
somewhere along the centre aisle, wearing a vibrant and loud red lipstick. I
took out a mirror and examined my lip colour; I was looking more and more
pallid.
The manner her lips move towards
different directions when she speaks and the slow, seemingly-out-of-a-movie
gliding actions she does seemed as if there is a rollercoaster of brand new
human experiences tingling the glutton within me. My eyes slither with every
movement of her lips. My throat would tease my mouth by remaining dry for
seconds; my hand would gently caress my stomach as if I was copulating with a
big bowl of hot, spicy Ramyun.
It
was almost a sensationalize feeling of love at first sight; but then the professor
signalled the dismissal of the class and I had to say goodbye to what we came
to know as the perfect puta red
lipstick.
Thinking
about how long I would have to wait to reunite with my newfound eye candy
seemed eternal.
It took me back to how I choose and
buy my lipsticks. The retelling of this story to a multitude of people, some
who I already knew and some who I just met, would be as painful as waking up at
1:00 in the afternoon to attend your CMSC 2 class and stop your siesta. It was like a tug-of-war between
the desire to pull people in and the fear of being pushed away.
On my 17th birthday, mom
handed me a present. It was probably the most disappointingly wrapped present I
have received in 17 years; it was in a super small gift wrapper. The size took
away all of my excitement to open it, but I did so, nonetheless. It was one of
those moments when you think of a plausible rationale why a person would give
such a gift knowing that it is not within your circle of interest, or
expectation for the matter.
Mom
gave me my first lipstick, baby pink
was written on the bottom part of it.
With a huge question mark drawn all
over my face, mom gave me a kiss on the right cheek and said, “Dalaga ka na e.
Happy birthday.” and all of a sudden, it made sense. That particular instance
started the lipstick story.
Like a baby, I almost asked why I
cannot have the shade she was wearing and she answered me briefly. She said it
was not the colour for my age. Red, according to her, is colour for strong,
working women.
However, unlike other people, I love
to rationalize why I am sort of hooked into collecting different shades in the
hopes of finding that one, perfect colour that would make me empowered as a
woman and as someone belonging to the middle class of the social structure and
perhaps with a stubborn desire to prove my mom wrong, that red can be my colour
as well.
I was in the make-up section of a
small provincial mall in Ilagan Isabela called Northstar Mall when a woman,
about 40 to 50 years of age inquired for a deeper shade of maroon in the Ever
Bilena line.
The
saleslady looking almost like a pale white siopao drizzled with an overly red eye
shadow, blush-on and lipstick, almost like using the lipstick to create an
entire look, gladly raided the entire rack to help the woman find her shade.
As
the saleslady was busy finding what she was asked to find, my mom exclaimed the
name of the old woman and made beso with
her. I overhear her starting a little chat with the woman and even asked her
her free time to visit us in the house for manicures and pedicures. So, I
completely assumed it was mom’s manicurist. The woman told my mom that her
daughter is getting married that weekend and she needed to buy a lipstick for
it. I still remember her words to describe the wedding, “Kay judge lang. Mahal
kasi”.
After
about ten minutes of going back and forth and reading all the lipstick labels,
the saleslady finally handed over a red tube of lipstick with a shade close to
what the old woman asked for. Looking amply satisfied, the woman asked for the
price.
“155 pisos ma’am. Waterfruf na rin
po siya, matagal matanggal”, the saleslady responded.
The wide, satisfied smile turned
into a face of apprehension. The old woman immediately reached into her bag [my
guess is that she counted how much many she has at the moment] and told the
saleslady, “Sige. Balik na lang ako”.
At first, I really did not
understand what is so expensive about a hundred and fifty five pesos. I own at
least three of those products and they were the cheapest in my collection. The
image of the old woman walking out the store without being able to purchase
what she came there for etched a lasting memory. Only when I was having my
internship in Mandaluyong that I was able to give a reasonable justification
for the woman, the lipstick and the P155.
I was sent into an undercover task
by my supervisor when she spotted my workstation and realized I was done with
the tasks for the day and was ready to go home. She only gave me bits of
information to work with, not exactly an elaborate discussion on what I should
actually do and who should I be watching and/or following but from what she
said I got that I need to secretly follow two people hired to do ‘flyering’
[flyer distribution] as part of the company’s advertising initiatives.
These
people, according to my supervisor, are contractual workers needed to be
monitored and documented that tasks are really being executed properly at the
specified time frame.
It was not really a big of a deal
and I did not mind going out of the office to do field works until my boss
instructed me to go from Mandaluyong to Guadalupe. Not just take a cab to
Guadalupe but to walk from Mandaluyong to a certain spot and then ride the MRT
to Guadalupe and then march under the heat of the Q.C sun just to look for two
guys I never met wearing black shirts giving away flyers to people and take
pictures of them. I started shaking and it felt like I was going to barf any
moment [ I have never commuted in my life and now my boss expects me to commute
in a place I am a total stranger to ].
Immediately, I headed to the comfort
room to remove my loud, fuchsia lipstick and applied a colourless balm probably
because of the paranoia of attracting the attention of snatchers and drug
addicts along the way. Adding fuel to the fire, I was in my corporate attire
with a pair of high heels.
At about 45 minutes of looking for
strangers and taking a couple of pictures of people whose faces I am not even
sure of, I noticed a weird, sticky feeling on my face. My lip balm is already
melting which I took as a sign of resignation from the task. I waited for a cab
and told the driver to drive me to Megamall.
I took advantage of the bad traffic
to freshen up and realized I did not bring a spare lip balm of lipstick and so
upon arriving at the mall, the first section I went to visit was the make-up
section. The brand I was browsing products from was Nichido, a super small within
the wide array of make-up stalls inside the department store.
The most varied make-up products one will ever
see, from Philippine drugstore products like Ever Bilena, Fashion 21, Nichido,
Kokuryu, LOL to sort of high-end products like Maybelline, Revlon, Max Factor,
Clinique amongst others, are inside just one building.
Looking for a shade I still do not
have [probably bordering from plum and wine shades], I see a woman [maybe in
her 20s], wearing black pumps, high-waist skirt and an office coat; almost like
someone fresh out of a magazine [ this is the part when I raised my eyebrows
and examined the woman from head to toe. A very ‘teleserye’ move, I know. ].
The
woman was holding a grocery basket [the ones SM Department store uses], and was
carelessly and casually pulling out about three shades of Revlon lipsticks [one
costs P450. FYI.]; checking out the shades and then putting them inside the
grocery basket alongside a couple pieces of clothing.
This
particular instance took me back into the old woman walking out the mall
without the lipstick she chose just because she found P155 too expensive for a
make-up product. I started looking at lipsticks in a different light from that
moment.
Not
only that such lip colour conceals physical lip imperfections, creates a
dominating and empowered look for women, and infuses a heightened level of
confidence; but it represents how this society basically operates.
I
still haven’t found the perfect shade but I look at Taz’ every time we meet for
ENG 106 and get seated on my favourite place in the room, admiring the colour puta red. Puta in this context does not actually imply sexual undertones and
promiscuity but is reflective of how it manages to trigger an experience only
comprehended by people with the same level of affinity to lipsticks.
With
a friend, I stomped through the humble department store SM Calamba has to find
my own variation of puta red; my own
shade of instigating memory and social involvement, my own colour of defying my
generation, my own puta red.
Puta red,
therefore, is an exemplary illustration of how Taz came about the juxtaposition
of the concept of the shade with being the colour of our generation.
