This morning I had a run-in with a lip plumping product that REALLY lives up to its claims. More on that later.

I’ve tried to pretend I don’t love makeup.  Not very well, mind you, but I have given it a good try.  You know what? I give up.  I am completely fascinated by the world of cosmetics.  

I even tried to be a Mary Kay lady for awhile, a few years back.  I bought $3000 worth of makeup, gave LaLa a makeover that had her break out in red painful blotches, and then I quit.  Fascination with makeup does NOT translate to sales ability. No. It might loosely translate into, “They say this is good, but be REAL careful, since it made my sister’s face look REAL red. Are you sure you want to buy that?”

This makeup thing isn’t new. When I was younger, my favorite thing was to get my grandmother to let me put on her lipstick for her, right before we left to go somewhere. Grandmommy had about 15 tubes of the almost identical coral-red lipstick lined up under her medicine cabinet. She’d sigh, and grumble, but let me do it. Then we’d giggle and she’d try to hold her mouth still while at the same time, telling me to stop laughing and be still. Not easy. I’d mess it waaay up, and then she’d fix it. If you’ve ever worn bright coral-red, you know it’s not the easiest shade to erase, once a wiggly, giggly eleven year old shmears it everywhere. It probably says a lot about how patient she was with me.

Around that same age, I remember talking at length with LaLa and our mother about the names of different makeup colors. We just adored the names of some colors. And if a lipstick name wasn’t good? Then it was hard to like that color. We agreed. Also, one time the three of us were with another woman and one of us complimented her lipstick and asked her the name of the color. I can’t remember who she was, but she said, “Oh, I don’t know. Let me check.” As she dug in her purse, the three of us bugged our eyes at each other - discreetly - communicating “HOW DOES SHE NOT KNOW THE COLOR OF HER LIPSTICK? HAS SHE FORGOTTEN HER CAT’S NAME, TOO?” These things matter.

Why am I telling you this? To give a little context for my cosmetic experiment gone bad. You know those free samples you can get from Sephora? Some of them I get out of pure, lifelong curiosity.

I have a BIG mouth. I actually get it from Grandmommy, but unlike her, I do not favor coral-red. It tends to make my BIG mouth look even bigger. (really. that picture to the right is me - and if you click it, it will get bigger. in that picture I’m making a funny face that actually makes my sizable mouth appear somewhat smaller than it really is.)

So there was no good reason whatsoever to try Lip Injection Extreme. NONE.

Except my lifelong cosmetic fascination.

I’ve looked at products like that and wondered if they actually worked - seems like a big claim, and frankly, i never believed in lip plumping claims, short of collagen. So when Sephora had a free sample, I got it.

I never should have used it.

The stuff WORKS. When they say, Lip Injection Extreme - well. Extreme is not a word I will again ignore so easily. YIKES.

I shmeared it on, and there were instant tingles/stinging and a slightly bad taste. Then I walked off to the closet, trying to tell myself that Burt’s Bees tingles too, and that doesn’t mean anything.

Surely I was imagining that slight sensation of my lips inflating like a king sized AeroBed.

There happens to be a mirror in my closet.

And a reflection of a truly ginormous set of lips that have oddly turned bright red. Rapid Lip Inflation can bring redness, it seems. Well. Okay.

I run back to the free sample and cringe when I read that the effects are meant to be long term.

I stare at the mirror and wonder what long term really means.

Then I wonder what color lipstick would make my mouth look smaller. My mother - an artist - would know. But it’s the middle of the night in Australia, and she probably wouldn’t deem the question emergency, ‘wake up the j-mom’ worthy. I decide to take her oft-repeated advice when some small detail of my appearance was bothering me back in the teen days: ‘don’t look in a mirror no matter what, and don’t think about it.’

And that wisdom still works. (Not that I ever listened to her then and actually TRIED that. too rational for my teen years.) By the time I checked my reflection again, four hours, later, all was normal.

So. Let’s just consider that product road tested, and proven to live up to its name AND THEN SOME.

Now.

It’s the 17th. Every month on the 17th I ask you to do a self breast exam, and leave a comment saying you did. If you do, you’re eligible for a prize.

And this month….? this month you will receive lots of Sephora samples (nothing with the word “extreme” - promise) and a Sephora Vanilla Cupcake Bubble Bath. I don’t like to smell like food, but a whole lotta y’all do. *

*this statement is NOT based on my own sniffing of readers. this statement is based on lifelong curiosity of the cosmetic industry, and noticing how they insist on making lip glosses and shower gels smell like cotton candy and fruit (gag) and vanilla and even apple pie.