Signatures

Right as the holidays closed this year, I was able to stay in Manhattan for a few days with one of my best friends. On a particularly windy day, we decided we were all "after-christmas sale"-d out and wanted to be more culturally aware. We went to, in my opinion, one of the more underrated museums and true beauties of NYC, the Morgan library and museum.

via here

Due to the time (11am on a Friday morning), we were a minority in the museum. The demographics were basically ages 7-11 (field trip), and 50+. Ignoring the little ones, many of the museum-goers were older, elegant, and worldly women. While people-watching (one of my favorite past-times in museums), I began to notice something. Each of these women were wearing some sort of lipstick. Whilst my friend and I checked our coats, women were either scrambling to put on one more coat of their Chanel rouge, or had just gotten their coats back and seemed somewhat comforted when they felt the lipstick in the front pocket of their Ferragamo jacket. This intrigued me, as I have, for most of my life, been fascinated when my mom always put on lipstick before leaving the house for almost every errand. I constantly find Chanel lipsticks hidden in almost every room of the house. I asked my friend if she had noticed this and she said, "I find lipstick everywhere, in the kitchen, the pantry, even in the basement next to the treadmill!"

I began to wonder, is this "signature color" something that just missed our generation? You don't see girls or young professionals scrambling to put on lipstick in between classes, or after their morning coffee. 

Granted, the red lip trend is definitely in, but I think that the majority of younger women use lipstick solely when posing for pictures, or before a night out. Day-to-day lipstick is maybe even considered overkill. 

I believe, quite possibly, that younger women fear they simply don't have time for this added step in their daily routine. However, in the this fast-paced age, in the fastest city in the world, I saw these older women taking their time with their lipstick and ensuring its application perfection before immersing themselves back into the hustle and bustle. 

Maybe women today have adapted a complex where they fear making anything their "signature", their one-and-only anything because it will make them miss out on something, on changing or bettering themselves. We grew up in a world with options, choosing just one is something we don't know how to do. We can't even choose one thing to do for more than six seconds. Want to write a paper? Well, let me do that while I check Facebook, twitter, listen to music, and write a blog post dedicated to lipstick. 

Why I believed I needed to dedicate an entire post to this, we will never know, but to end on a good note, here is something hilarious.