MAC Lipstick

When I was still a first-year student I was trying to make friends. I had failed at that miserably during orientation week. I actively avoided groups of people, and took the long way around campus to not pass by the lounge (where the noisy people hang around to play FIFA). To compensate for that failure, I attached myself to a friend from high school and asked him to introduce me to people, or at least not to leave me alone during lunch time because I don’t want to end up eating alone as always.

He listened, and during lunch one day he invited two of his friends to join us. Both girls had been with us in high school, but I didn’t know them very well. They came, one with a venti Starbucks in her hand, and the other in heels. I don’t remember anything from the conversation. I don’t even remember if I was talking or just watch them talk back and forth to each other. The only thing that I remember that somewhere along this boring gathering they started talking about the latest Mac lipstick shade, and one of them was wearing it and she was showing it to the other girl. I was thinking how I don’t own any Mac lipsticks (yet), and that I don’t even know how much it costs. I made an uninformed decision that I can’t afford one. Meanwhile, one of them (who happened to be the daughter of a famous TV figure) was pulling out the rest of the lipsticks collection from her bag.

At this point I decided that I definitely should not be part of this group. I think my friend noticed the same because he never accompanied me to lunch again. Such a small (inexpensive btw) item like a lipstick made me feel that I belong to a different group in society. Those girls knew that well, because I wasn’t involved in the conversation. To me they were showing off who owned more lipstick, or in other words who got more money from daddy, whose daddy was richer. The dad who sent his daughter to VCU, or the dad that sent his daughter to Georgetown.

Funny enough I am writing this four years later after the incident had happened. The main reason is that this incident made me feel ‘less worthy’. I felt the same when I was a kid (maybe seven years old). We were visiting far relatives of us, and as kids of course we started a fight with their kids when playing. I remember the mom coming in the room and she started talking in French to the girls. One, even as a kid I knew it is rude to speak in a different language in front of those who don’t understand it, and two I felt the same way the Mac lipstick made me feel years later. At this point I didn’t even knew English (and of course no French).

Both situations translated in my head as actions needy people take to overcome the feeling of emptiness that they have. Yes, I was hurt, both times. Yes, I went out after that and bought a matte ‘Mehr’ Mac lipstick.

Screw your French and your lipsticks.