The Taste of 1950s Lipstick

No bitterness. Actually, lipstick in those days tasted a little sweet. What I remember most is the smothery feel of having something unnatural there and the tendency to move my mouth in a self-conscious and exaggerated way as I talked.

You never wanted to bring the color all the way to the corners of your lips unless you thought your mouth was too small, and you never wanted to make those two little points under your nostrils because that's what old ladies did. (It must have been the fashion in the 20s or something.)

You had to keep reapplying it, and not just after meals. After applying, you were supposed to blot on a piece of Kleenex or maybe at the bottom of a love letter to prove it was SWAK (Sealed With A Kiss).

The tubes were metal, two parts, a cap and a push up tube. They were heavy, polished, very well made. The brand usually had a logo engraved on the cap somewhere. Even the dime store stuff, like Tangee, came in an expensive tube. The tubes lasted a long time. If Mom really liked a color she would dig the last of it out with a toothpick!

The expensive lipsticks were on display in glass cases in department stores, all lined up on little glass shelves in graduated colors. I loved to read the labels--the names of the colors were a hoot-- Just google vintage lipstick shades. It must have taken an English degree to think up the names.

I did taste it when I was a kid. It tasted better than chap stick, cocoa butter or licorice, but not much better.

Mom, a brunette, always wore red, never coral or rose, the shades I thought were prettiest. When she shopped for lipstick the clerk would make swatches of the colors on the inside of her arm--a very important purchase that I loved to watch.

The lipstick, itself, was firmer and I remember it as being very heavily perfumed. I went to catholic school so we weren't allowed to wear it and the nuns could sniff it out, even if it was wiped off with a Kleenex.

The few times I wore it, ( once as Sioux war paint because I was heavily influenced by Sal Mineo in Commanche the Brave Horse) it was very uncomfortable--greasy and melty. Not as uncomfortable as the spanking Mom administered after the Sioux war paint thing. You did not mess with lipstick. It never came out of anything--especially little blonde girl's tee-shirts. The really pale lipsticks were the last look when I got to Jr. High--pale corpse lips and lots of eye liner--Georgy Girl look.

By the time I made it to high school the hippie look was in, so I have never worn the stuff except a couple of clandestine times. It really was uncomfortable to wear, especially swimming, playing tennis, dancing. That look --bouffant hair, lipstick, face powder was really out of style by the late sixties. --s6

When I was a little girl in the late '50s, my mother only wore lipstick on special occasions. I remember it was a dark red in a metal tube (Revlon, I think), and when she kissed me on the cheek, I remember it being sort of waxy feeling. She always had to wipe off my face with a (saliva dampened) tissue. I remember it had a slight perfumey smell, since she never wore perfume or used hair spray and also didn't wear foundation, rouge (blush), or face powder, I knew it was from the lipstick.

I remember that in the fifties one was either a red lipstick person or a coral lipstick person. Your basic middle class woman didn't do a lot of experimenting once she found a color that worked. My late mother was a red lipstick person. Her one and only color was Revlon's Fire and Ice. She bought one tube at a time and used it every time she left the house. It went on right from the tube (no lip brushes) in one thick layer. She'd put a tissue between her lips and press to blot it, and she didn't need a mirror to get it on right. It had a dry texture, a slightly sweet flavor and no scent (there were other brands that had flowery scents, but she didn't like that) and it left a stain on the lips even after it wore off.

When she passed in 2004, the funeral home put coral lipstick on her and that upset me more than almost anything else that day.

I hated the flavor. To me, Mom's lipstick tasted like wax dipped in my least favorite vegetable. She was a redhead and wore only cool pinkish colors, something that would be called fuchsia today. She never wore red even when it was stylish. And the taste! Double-yuck. Of course, that didn't keep me from experimenting with her make-up and her high heels when I played dress up.

My grandmother had a vintage metal tray with maybe four or five holes in it, meant to hold lipstick tubes. The tubes themselves were metal--some were solid, maybe etched with a fancy design, while others were metal filigree. One had a tiny rectangular flip-up mirror that clipped to the outside of the lipstick tube. Very fancy!

When she died, I went looking for it in her bathroom, because it was one thing that I remembered fondly from my childhood. Alas, it was gone. She probably sold it to help pay the mortgage at some point before she died.

I was a little girl in the '80s, but I'm pretty sure my grandmother's lipstick was the same as she had in the '50s/60s. Like the others have said, it was waxy, perfumed, and in a well-made tube. I remember hers being a black or navy blue case with diamonds carved into it. She always wore a plum-colored lipstick. I loved to open her makeup drawer and just smell it. I never played dress-up with her makeup. It seemed so elegant and sophisticated.

Compared to my mother who was into the late-'70s/'80s hideous orange and brown colors, my grandmother's makeup drawer felt like I was traveling back in time. She was so pretty and sophisticated in photos I've seen of her from her younger days, and I think she always wore that same plum color.

Oh, yes. I learned that when in my teens (and on a change-Mom-crusade), I tried to get her to wear coral. What a non-starter that was.