A lipstick rant
Okay, I just came back from a business meeting. I've met three times with this same group-- nice, friendly folks. I've joined their group to network our business--- this is after going to other groups, doing online research, talking to people I know and trust. I'm happy to be at the meeting; excited even.
This is a teeny, tiny rant, so please excuse me while I whine. Several of the women in the group groom at the table, during the meeting. This is lunch meeting-- we're eating. The most common grooming is group lip-stick application. When one reaches into her purse to fetch a tube and compact, the rest of the groomers follow like lemmings. Is it just me, or is that just too gross?
Ask Gospazha-- I'm not a horrible bug-in-your-butt kind of person. I'm also not a fashionista, so maybe this is a fashion deal and I just don't get it. Or is it like when birds fluff their feathers?
I wear lipstick, but the thought of grooming at a luncheon table is repulsive to me. If you made it to the end of my rant-- thank you. If you know why this behavior occurs, please enlighten me.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming...
posted by lewlew @ 3:00 PM
13 Comments:
From one male's point of view, the group lipstick application is similar to the group bathroom visit. Many times I have been with women at a restaurant and, when one decides to visit the loo, the rest go with her. I've never asked about this behavior but is it a group pee-in or what?
I stand ready for the flames.
I'm with Mark on the restroom thing.
I like to think I know at least as much as the next guy about female anatomy. Based on my own observations, I'm fairly certain it has nothing to do with a need to help aim.
So what is the deal exactly?
I don't see anything wrong with applying a little lipstick after a meal, so long as everyone at the table is done eating and the action is brief and discreet. Thirty-minute lips should NOT be done at the table. I usually apply a little chapstick after I eat, and I wouldn't considering it "grooming", nor do I feel the need to visit the bathroom when I have no need of plumbing usually found in a bathroom.
If it's anything more than whipping out a mirror and quickly dabbing a little lipstick on, then no, take it to the restroom.
And I don't know why women feel the need to visit the restroom together.
However, I DO have a pathological hatred of people who clip their nails in public.
Oldy-moldy curmudgeon chiming in here ...
My mother taught me that personal grooming of just about any sort was not to be done in public. She didn't wear lipstick, and neither did I, so I'm not sure where that would fall, but I suspect I know. I do recall seeing her apply chapstick in casual public situations. But of course, all this was back in the day when people didn't wear their pajamas to go grocery shopping.
I don't have any answers on the bathroom group-pee, because I try to avoid such things at all costs. (Going with my 5-year-old daughter doesn't count.) I've heard that it's often used as a time for gossiping/comparing notes/doing viciously bitchy female stuff that they don't want their guys seeing.
How do you get used to the feel of lipstick? I'm okay with chapstick, as long as it isn't the cakey paraffin-type stuff, but every lipstick I've ever tried has made my lips feel like they're suffocating. (Not to mention that I think I have a special lipstick-color-selector color blindness going on.)
My wife confirms sunni's comment that a group bathroom visit is "often used as a time for gossiping/comparing notes/doing viciously bitchy female stuff that they don't want their guys seeing". She also said it is especially useful when one of the women is seeing a new guy who is with them and they get together to evaluate him. I've seen this kind of behavior before and I was astonished. But I was young then and didn't understand how women, the supposedly emotional sex, could be so calculating. I had a lot to learn then and I still do.
I'm a bit baffled about the group pee-in situation, myself. I am very capable of using the facilities on my own. Sunni's observation about en masse travels to the loo is spot on, I'd say. I've witnessed enough of these gaggles to say that's pretty much what happens. Why, I'm not quite sure.
Now, I don't mind company when there's long lines, like at the fair or a ball game. There's almost nothing worse that cuing up to go, with 100 of your newest best friends. Women get very chatty with solo people in the loo line. Sometimes I'm okay with it, and sometimes I'm not in the mood.
As for the public grooming, my mom must be cut from the same cloth as Sunni's, because she says stuff like that. Is it true that we become our mothers? Yikes. To answer G's question-- yes these are 30+ minute lipstick jobs. The only thing they refrain from is using lip liner.
As for getting used to lip stick-- you pick the right kind that feels good. My lips get really chapped, so I wear chapstick a lot. Burt's Bees has tinted chapstick that comes in lots of fun colors, and I loved the one I picked out but it's MIA right now. As for the color thing, I'm quite miserable at that, too. I'm to the point I mix and match a shade with one of those scary brown lipsticks, which tones the color down to a shade I like. And, I swiped a lip gloss tube Rosie didn't like. It is this swirl thingie that's kind of raspberry colored and has a light texture. So what if it says "Mary Kate and Ashely" on the tube. I just don't take it out for public grooming =).
Alright, as long as we're going to be bagging on the group bathroom visits, as silly as I think they are, I don't understand why some men go out of their way to AVOID going to the bathroom at the same time.
If you have to pee, you have to pee, and worrying about how it looks is equally as silly as women who insist on peeing together.
And taking that long to redo lipstick at the table is just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. If it takes more than 30 seconds, get your bitchass to the bathroom, dammit.
gospazha asks why some men go out of their way to AVOID going to the bathroom at the same time. Two responses:
1. The obvious one: some men are so afraid of appearing to be gay that they don't want the "wink wink, nudge nudge" comments about their visiting the loo together.
2. But the more important thing is to do the math about peeing frequency. The average person's kidneys put out about 1 cc per minute of urine. The average male has to go when his bladder contains roughly 300 cc of fluid; that is, about once every 5 hours or therebouts. In order for the guys all to have to go at the same time, they would have to do their 1st pee at the same time each day, drink the same amount of fluid (coffee, tea, beer) each day and have the same bladder sensitivity to fluid content. The chances of all these things being identical in any 2 guys is small. So, that's why men don't all go at the same time. It's not avoidance, it's physiology.
Where I work, there's about 3 men for every one woman in the office, yet the men and womens' bathrooms are exactly the same size. Judging from the comments I hear around work regarding the insufficient male bathroom facilities, I'd say it's not that uncommon.
It's just as silly for women to insist upon visiting the bathroom together as it is for men to avoid it. Both are rooted in needless concern for what everyone else thinks. Any secure individual wouldn't time his/her bathroom visits upon the actions of anyone else.
And here I was thinking that guys didn't like company on the loo trips for, er, comparison reasons.
lewlew, you pegged my public restroom redline—getting chatted up. I'm just not comfortable with it, probably because I've never been good at making small talk. (And if it's any consolation, I haven't entirely become my mother, but it's amazing that bits of her that I didn't like have still managed to worm their way into my repertoire.)
30+ minutes to apply lipstick?! What the frick is going on, applying it to each cell individually?? I will be so lost when my daughter wants to start using it.
I might have misunderstood what gospazha meant by a "30 minute lips." I thought she meant application that would ensure the lipstick stayed on a long time i.e. 30 minutes or longer. When you hastily apply lipstick, it can be too light and fade away quickly (or put on with too heavy of a hand and look way weird, so the light touch is usually used with a quick freshen-up). So, these women don't spend 30 minutes putting on their lipstick, but they do take a long time, taking care to make sure their applied lipstick will look right and stay on for a while. Average time is about 10 minutes, which is still WAY to long, in my book.
I did a google search for "applying lipstick at table" and found your blog. It also really bothers me! Your rant was very tame. ;)
I have three guinea pigs, I see you have one. =)
Hey StillWater and "AG"--
I missed your comments before. I apologize. That is really gross that a woman may possibly eat 4-9 pounds of lipstick in a life time. EEEWWWW.
We do have a guinea pig, AG. She's quite sweet, but a bit skittish. My daughter, Rosie, brought her home from school, after the guinea pig in her science class had babies.
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