American in Spain

Lipstick with Tí­a Inés

October 12, 2011

Lipstick with Tí­a Inés (thumbnail)You know that thing women do with their lips after applying lipstick, rubbing them together, presumably to even out the lipstick? Since I've never needed to, I've simply never learned to do that. When I try, I look like an idiot – more so than usual – and those facial muscles get exhausted in about two seconds and hurt for another minute. Some of you have already started doing it while you read this, and the rest of you will now. Go ahead... Along with the pain of high heels and dealing with long hair and leg hair, makeup is an expectation that our society will thrust upon my daughter simply because she was born with ovaries instead of testicles...so I guess she'd better get an early start on building those lipstick muscles. Luckily she has a support network of aunts to help her with this task.

Nora is currently at the stage where, if she sees a woman – usually her mother – applying lipstick or eyeshadow, she immediately demands to have some put on her as well. She gets a tiny bit applied and then trots around like she's Marilyn Monroe, refusing to give kisses to anyone "because I'll get lipstick on your face". It's pretty adorable.

In the video, she's got a constellation of bug bites down the left side of her face, along with a bruise from when a face-height bollard jumped out in front of her and caught her off guard. Both have mostly disappeared now, five days later.