Lips to lips

Women pout with them, blow with them, smack with them, and they often lubricate them with their own saliva. But when they dab them with a splash of red, then it’s as if hell is holding a rave party here on earth. 

At least that’s what the medieval Church authorities feared when they declared red lip color as a vile challenge to God’s handiwork, or what arm-twisted Victorian England lawmakers to outlaw red lip coloring for fear that anxious codpiece-sporting males might be the target of pikot by the mere site of crimson-lipped she-devils (I hope this doesn’t give our Congress any more harebrained ideas. They have a more than adequate supply of them as it is). 

But what’s the big razzmatazz over smearing female lips with lipstick anyway, my three female readers? Don’t you know that our human lips are mere evolutionary freaks of nature? 

We human beings have what are called everted lips — which means they are inside out. That soft, fleshy, pink protuberance pasted on our faces? It would be hidden, say, inside the mouths of our monkey cousins. (Yes, that’s right. Our mouths are born exhibitionists.) And, if zoologist Desmond Morris is to be believed, one of the primary reasons that our lips are everted is because they are well-suited to their first task as milking devices on the equally unique human female breasts (Ah, blessed are we amid the animal kingdom).  

Since monkeys have inverted lips, this is probably the reason why you don’t see many of them wearing lipstick. And monkeys are probably better off without lipstick, and not only because of aesthetic reasons. That’s because monkeys know exactly what goes into a tube of lipstick. The Sumerians dabbed their smackers with ground red ochre and animal fats. The Ancient Egyptians vexed the Roman Empire with lips full of purplish red-dye from mercuric plants and boiled carmine beetles. And the Ancient Greeks concocted lip coloring from plant dyes, laway, sheep sweat and — surprise, surprise — crocodile poop. (This must have been a great way for single Greek women to turn away advances from overly hairy Greek men: “I’m sorry, I can’t kiss you. I’ve got s%^& on my lips.”) 

Of course, we have since learned from our crocodile poop-lipped ancestors how to formulate modern lipstick with less repulsive ingredients — like synthetic perfumes and petroleum-derived mineral oils and synthetic dyes from aluminum and lead and iron oxides. Yes, today’s lipstick is a tad less repulsive and a tad bit more carcinogenic (but as a nod to our ancestors, today’s lipstick still carries the oil glands of sheep). On top of that, modern lipstick comes with its own set of health benefits — it also has castor oil. So, my three female readers, you will never have to worry about constipation ever again if lipstick is part of your balanced diet. Especially since the average female consumes four pounds of lipstick over her lifetime (hmmm, maybe those monkeys are better off).

Not only do women apply hazardous material to their outside-in lips, but some women even shoot their lips up with paraffin, liquid silicone or the widely popular lip enhancer, “beef tissue” (yes, my three female readers, that’s what goes into collagen) to make their lips look as full-bodied as a Belo Medical endorser. But for some women who don’t like dead cow swimming on the inside of their lips, they can always fatten their lips with their own fat. Unfortunately, you will need the assistance of a cosmetic surgeon to do this, as your willpower alone is not enough to move the fat from your thighs to your lips. 

This raises another question, though: why would modern-day women voluntarily have their lips coated with sheep glands and then injected full of dead cow? Well, apparently these types of lips make them more attractive to the hairier, hare-brained sex. 

In the book Superflirt, researchers created computerized versions of the average female face and showed it to several male test groups to rate their attractiveness. Sure enough, the first set of faces was judged to be average in terms of attractiveness. However, in the next set, researchers increased the lip size of the computerized face by 10 percent. And like (Adobe Photoshop) magic, the enhanced face was judged as younger and more attractive-looking. As the lips were exaggerated further, the faces were also progressively judged to be more and more attractive. And what was judged as the most attractive looking face? It was a face that resembled a pair of lips with eyes, much the same way that Angelina Jolie looks like right now.

But why does puckering up with their whole face render women more attractive?  According to Simply Irresistible, The Psychology of Seduction, an attractive face that screams “I’m as fertile as the Department of Agriculture’s agricultural budget” hinges on a combination of full lips and a short lower jaw. When a woman hits puberty, her bone structure remains largely unchanged and child-like, but with more subcutaneous fat (this is the kind of taba that you three female readers want to keep). This makes their lips appear fuller and thicker. And when a woman’s full, thick lips are wet and pouty with her mouth slightly open, this is a full-on female courtship display (which is far more popular than the female display of shaved legs, shaved moustaches and shaved armpits). 

But, again and again and again, why do full, thick, wet and pouty lips (the type of pouty lips that Santa Claus would not approve of) cause those of us with everted genitals to go into seizures?

The book The Naked Woman (which, unfortunately, does not have any centerfold pictures) says that female lips are sexually attractive, because, well, because they are gaya-gaya. They are a “genital echo” with the shape, texture, thickness and color of the woman’s (cough, cough) other set of lips (and, yes, I promise you there is an actual book called The Naked Woman). Needless to say, both lips are so intensely sensual that the Latin term for labia is “lips.”

But that’s not the only that separates these anatomical twins at birth You see, when the human female biological hardware boots up and would like to (cough, cough) interface with some male hardware, both sets of lips become more conspicuous than bribe attempts at the DOJ — they begin to swell, redden, moisten and become more sensitive as they are engorged with blood (although this swelling may require some visual confirmation, I will take my wife’s gynecologist’s word on this). 

According to our favorite zoologist Desmond Morris, this explains why — in experiments using photos of women wearing various lipstick colors — men consistently found women wearing the brightest reds the most attractive. Is it any wonder then that advertisers are increasingly obsessed with making the facial lips appear as aroused as possible? They’ve got lipsticks that make your lips look ultra-shiny, super-juicy, shiny-moisty, wetty-looky, and tutti-frutti-oh-rudy. The subcutaneous message of all these newfangled lipstick products is this: if intense sexual arousal can lead your lips (north and/or south) to look (cough, cough) moist, red and swollen, then the lipstick should follow this physiological change to make the lips more succulent and inviting. In fact, Morris says (and I quote verbatim from Morris, because I do not want to end up with sexually un-aroused swollen lips), “these lipstick manufacturers did not create an enhanced mouth, they created a pair of super labia.” Nowadays, the facial lips out-labia the labia. There’s no lab lost over here.

Sigh. I will never look at moist, juicy, bright-red, collagen-enhanced lips the same way again. Mainly because if I do, my wife will take red hot pokers and shove them into my eyes.   

So, if facial lips are a genital echo of the labia, then that means the female anatomy has pretty good acoustics. I’ve been double-checking my own body to see if it’s been doing any echoing as well. Although I suspect that it already has. Why else would my friends call me a d(*&head?   

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