Dear Field Trippers old and new: I missed you last Friday! I was on an actual field trip of sorts, which I will be writing about soon. If you’re new around here, welcome, and be prepared for a lil’ chaotic good born of hungry curiosity. F I E L D T R I P kinda roams all over the place, but common themes are music, art, midlife, nature, writing, fleeting obsessions, and Gen X stuff, with an eye drifting frequently to Gen Z, because my kid is one of those.
Today is my birthday, and I’m happy to spend part of it here with a few readers. If you’d like to transmit some bday vibes, you can a) tap the <3, b) share this post, c) tell us about your fave lipstick / makeup in the comments, and/or d) subscribe, like the baller you are.
***This just in:*** A dear college friend just sent me a picture of her first cicada sighting of cicadapocolypse 2024. She happens to be in Chapel Hill, home of UNC-CH, where we met in a creative writing class, and went to shows at the Cat’s Cradle, and got collegiate and shit.
My birthday is now made! Let us continue.
About a month ago, my dear friend, Gretchen of Chicago, asked me if I might write a piece for a new publication for which she’s managing editor. The Midst is founded by the great Amy Cuevas Schroeder of Venus Zine fame, and they bill themselves as a “gateway drug for the modern midlife experience.” That’s a party you don’t have to text me twice to attend. (There’s also a Midst Substack.)
The piece was about my decision to, in my (cough) withering years (cough), and after a lifetime of not bothering much in the way of lipstick at all, begin rocking a bold red lip. This journey is something I’d been planning to write about in FT, but when The Midst and Gretchen of Chicago come calling, you pick up the phone and do the work. The piece, with its rather large (!) selfies of yours truly, is here.
It’s also below, for your Substack reading pleasure. Big thanks to Gret and Amy and everyone at The Midst for publishing this piece, which I’m trying to convince myself is not super-embarrassing. (Want to listen to me read it? That’s up there at the top.)
Lipstick loud: Why I’m embracing a bold lip in midlife
Cruella was my gateway: An orange-red shade of the NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil. I’d purchased her six years ago, along with a more neutral, pinkish brown I picked up at the same time. I had never been big on lipstick — it felt incompatible with my low-maintenance vibe — but what can I say; I was feeling curious. (Also, I was on vacation in NYC.)
Back home, the neutral shade became my go-to, and stayed so into my late 40s, while Cruella — that bossy bitch, that loud talker — stayed tucked away in my makeup drawer. She waited, patiently. And then, on a spring evening about a year ago, right after I turned 50, I had a big work event on tap — my arts nonprofit’s annual fundraiser — and I brought Cruella with me. That night, everything changed.
In midlife, I have become a woman who rocks a bold red lip. It came on like a crush — a new fascination, a new plaything, a new tool in the evolving self-image kit. I was determined to bust into my fifth decade on this burning planet with joy and defiance, so perhaps it’s no surprise that, basically overnight, I became a lipstick lady in the loudest way possible. Cruella has friends now, a regular harem of reds. There are no fewer than six different tubes in my bag, and while I still consider myself a lipstick rookie, I could wax poetic about the pros and cons of each.
Like most obsessions, this one isn’t without awkward moments. I have ended up with red lipstick on the wrong parts of my face, on my teeth, my fingers. I leave a trail of crescent-marked coffee cups — a thing old me once found repugnant, when the lip traces weren’t mine — and have sat through meals full of lowkey worry that I’ve unintentionally achieved a bouche mordue that appears more bed-rotting-slovenly than bedhead-sexy. It’s all rather potentially…revealing.
The anxiety is real: In a piece for Women’s Health, the writer Lizzy Goodman reflects that “a bold red lip was an announcement to all that you cared. That you were trying. That you wanted to be looked at and paid attention to. … it meant saying out loud that I liked myself. Or at least that I liked some parts of my face.” And writing in Self about wearing a red lip for a week straight, Talia Abbas nods to the “overwhelming sensation of feeling like a fraud and being afraid of being called out for it.”
To all of this, I relate. Even if I have the look on lock (there’s no shortage of tutorials, no limit to lipstick-adjacent product), the choice to wear a bold lip in middle age, after years of demure tones or nothing at all, runs the risk of embarrassment, what maybe looks like a flagrant grasping toward vibrancy in the face of received narratives that urge midlife women to go softly into elastic-waist pants, muted shades, and comfortable shoes. (Mind you, I’m personally down with all of the above, and I truly don’t care who does or doesn’t affirm my choices.)
But a bold lip ultimately feels right for me now; and it feels worth it. It seems of a piece with my relationship to my body at fifty. Lately, acceptance feels like a full-time job: working to accept the natural changes that come with a midlife body, midlife job sitch, midlife me. With age comes constant negotiation with the self, and constant evaluation of what no longer serves us. (There’s no better mantra here than You Do You, but that doesn’t mean it’s a cinch to figure out.) Moi, I have at 50 bid adieu to bikinis and dresses above the knee, but in their place, voila, a bold lip feels like a more-than-fair trade. In spite of the tiny lines forming around my mouth (frankly, one of my most obvious signs of age), and in spite of the popular notion of the “invisible” middle-aged woman — and the demure, over-50 makeup she should wear — I’m throwing down the gauntlet. I choose to be seen, a move I believe will help power me through this evolutionary stretch.
And there it is, the gift of age: The fucks you left on the side of the road, or in the waste bin at the beauty counter as you received your beautiful new shade of red. I’m demanding attention — in a socially sanctioned, beauty-norms-unchallenged way, sure — but still. And reader, I have to report that, after a year of going about in a bold lip, I feel like strangers are nicer to me. They seem genuinely more interested, more communicative in my presence.
I cherish all older, red-lip icons, including some close pals. Take Lisa, who’s 68, and whom I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen without a fresh coat. She wears it to accentuate what she feels is her best feature. “I sit down in front of my mirror, look at my reflection and think, hmm, who do I want to be today?” she tells me. “Do I want to sail out the door, ready to turn heads? To have people offer to carry my groceries? To feel valued as a sexual creature, something this woman still wants? Why yes, I do. I am excited as I think about what to do, how to accessorize, how to make myself into another part of me, a brighter part of me. Which of my many facets will shine today?”
Another one of my bold-lip influencers, my friend Abby, a songwriter and musician in her early 40s, says, “I love red lipstick because it’s equal parts punk rock and classic fashion. It makes me feel both animalistic and refined, both Siouxsie and Coco.” When I ask her if she thinks she’ll keep wearing it after 45, she says, “Forever.”
And then there’s the Taylor effect. I’d be lying if I claimed Taylor Swift isn’t a catalyst for my new life in red. I kind of like knowing I’m not alone; rather, multitudes of women of all ages are feeling emboldened to rock a red lip for the first time, thanks to the Tay’s ubiquitous mug. It may be a trend, but it’s a trend that’s come along at the perfect moment for me.
At the same time, Instagram loves to show me another Swift — Rose-Marie Swift, a gorgeous, charming babe in her late 60s, who is also a makeup artist and the founder of RMS Beauty. She rocks a color she calls Ruby Moon (it’s named after her dog, because of course it is), and I can’t look away, I’m smitten.
I think of a favorite photo of me, taken last spring, at the very start of this whole red-lipstick thing—taken, appropriately enough, at the Eras Tour, when my teenage daughter and I snapped a selfie in the bleachers as we waited for the show to start. I love the way I look in it — outrageously happy, my hair up in space buns, mirror-ball earrings, my lips spread wide and red. No, I don’t look costume-y, I don’t look like a woman of a certain age taking a risk with a look that she should have left behind years ago. I look bright and loud in all the right ways; I am holding back nothing, saying everything.
A year later, I don’t see an end in sight to my bold-lip romance. When I look in the mirror, I think, Oh, yes. HI!! There you are. I feel pretty. Actually, hot. Like my half-century-old face has awakened with a new pep in its step, as if, in adding this layer of red I’ve uncovered some essential part of myself, a part that the world tries its damndest to bury with its incessant bullshit.
I do wonder if there’ll come a time when I tire of the bold lip look, or the light labor it requires, or my hyper awareness of my own face, and give it up. And then after, when I see pictures from my bold lip era, I’ll smile. With compassion.
If that happens, so be it. It’s fun, this bold-lip life. It’s a lark, and a bit of a f-you, and a pop of color in the drear. For now, I’m all in.
Tell me about your favorite lipstick or experiences with lipstick in the comments!
In 2015, I'd just broken up with my most serious (still!) boyfriend. A friend recommended I buy "1989," and by the time I listened to "Wildest Dreams," I was sold. I bought a ticket to see Taylor in Atlanta and took a coffee break so I wouldn't fall apart by the end of the album.
Not coincidentally, that's the year I started wearing a bold lip ("I've got that red lip classic thing that you like" felt right!). It's been a few years since I've consistently worn a bright red or pink lip, but the owners of a local coffee shop still comment that I'm the bright lipstick gal whenever they see me. And I'm on board with it.
All that to say, I loved this essay. Thanks for sharing! I especially enjoyed the connection to midlife. I was about to turn 34 (hmmm, Taylor's current age) at the time of this breakup. Now, at almost 43, I *do* find myself contemplating whether certain things make me look old. Age is a gift! *And* I want to feel my best, whatever that looks like. I love your Eras tour selfie, and I hope you continue to embrace the red lipstick for as long as it makes you feel as fabulous as it looks on you.
My favorite current lip color is Mad Hippie Cheek and Lip in Fig.
Seeing you at Erica Ciccarone's book signing Friday night, hearing you compliment me on my orangey lip and silver hair reminded me that I wanted to comment to this substack post and never did. I *really* appreciated this essay. I reread portions, even. Parts of it were things I've been attempting to piece together. And, like your continuing to ponder the pieces of your attraction to Neil Young, I continue to ponder the age thing. Mine. Others.
I'm a Boomer. Four years shy the cut off. 1960. I remember thinking I'd arrived into my wisdom years at 30. Snicker. That 40s were hot. (They were.) That I'd arrived at 50. But, there's something about 60. Two years in—nearly two years ago—because this is the year "when I'm 64," the aging thing got real. Sure there were hints at 40, 50, 55, but at 62, it got real. This whole year and last is me staring down and figuring out a path into the last 1/3 or 1/4 of my life. It's heavy as I continue and will always continue as a full-time caregiver.
My astrologer predicted that Capricorns, (I have a moon and rising in the sign,) would do something radical like cut off all their hair in 2020. I did. And more: from long dyed tendrils to silver and shorn. She made this prediction about Capricorns long before I met her.
I can't go back. I won't go back. Silver is my authenticity. But it's not easy when women 10 years my senior still dye their hair. I'm the youngest and the only of my two sisters that doesn't color. It takes courage. As it also kinda takes courage to sport a flaming red pout. I quickly learned when the pigment is gone from one's mane, it calls for COLOR! I majored on a beige lip for the preceding decade. Not any more. Color me red, orange, fuschia! But by 62, I had to find the type that would not creep up into the emerging lines above my highly pigmented lips. Not easy. Still searching now that Aveda no longer concocts makeup.
I probably took me three years to ease into this "Silver Sister" thing. But I've set my sights on the "Advanced Aging" babes portrayed in books, social media and film by Ari Seth Cohen. Go wild with print, with accessories, with color. Have a blast. Decorate your body like a walking canvas. And what I learned is what you helped me put into words: yes. It shows your trying. It says don't forget I'm a female human being here beside you, in front or behind you....
And, the funniest thing: all these Gen Z's stop me and ooze about my hair, my look, my get up. I do struggle mightily to not be a Q-tip head—you know the boring white coiff. The stereotypical aging woman who blends into the walls. I don't dress to be noticed, I dress to have fun, to express myself through my own unique fashion—lipstick, an accessory. So, yeah, I guess the positive consequences is I'm not entirely invisible—that sinking reality that starts to poke at most women's awareness as they crest 40.
I like my 60's. It's different. Life terrain feels little rockier, maybe, a little more uncertain, less predictable—as, really, all of life is....I look to my elder women friends and greater community of womanhood. How're they doing it? I want to rock and embrace it. I want to believe that my generation is not going to age quietly. (They've already started.) And, looking at all the chatter about peri- and menopause happening among GenXers, y'all are probably going to amplify the not aging quietly / we won't be forgotten thing. But, you may also realize like I did that 30, 40, 50, nah. Just wait. Yeah, I thought that, too, about aging. And I heard what my elders would say to me when I thought I'd arrived. Still young baby. And so am I. But 60's...it's the tiptoe into the real deep end of the aging pond. It's different.
It's different, but color me red. Or orange. Or, fuschia. Plus all the baubles, wild prints and intense colors. Let's rock!