lipstick + recession indicators
weather: 🌥️ moody, windy gray
critters: one (1) house finch
everything is called a "recession indicator" now. as a joke format, i love it. (they didn't put enough boba in my drink. recession indicator!)
i learned the lipstick effect is dubious at best, but i'm definitely buying more lip stuff lately. recession indicator, or a personal reaction to helplessness? are those kinda the same thing?
there was a job recruitment fair at my high school several months into the recession. i mean the big one.
mine was a school for future criminals and kids with undiagnosed mental illnesses, so our pickings were slim. the booths included a cosmetology school, an amusement park, an acupuncture clinic, a temp agency, the marine corps, and the army. every table had business cards and a few items of swag. this pen is now as old as i was when a bald pink dude in camo handed it to me.
there are a few more recruitment offices in my area lately--there's even one in the mall. that had never happened before. my current theory: back then, we had nordstrom.
you could probably do some computer math to calculate whether recruitment centers will appear in your own mall. while nordstrom OR neiman marcus OR saks fifth avenue OR bloomingdale's exist, there can be no recruitment center. their overpriced totemic protection has a large effective range, yea, even unto the plaza across the street with a dave & buster's.
these upper-crust malls seem to dwell in a space beyond the middle class squeeze. even in the worst downturns, when one of the pricy eateries is shuttered and the property managers permit a few kiosks of cheap toys and chocolates, there is always a line at louis vuitton, and williams sonoma is always packed.
my capture by the lipstick effect lately might just be a personal reaction to every nude lip becoming so warm-toned. recent nudes look like an orange julius compared to the tragic nub of my favorite discontinued MAC nude from 2015. i found one truly pink nude at a sephora over the winter and emptied the tiny little tube in a single month.
and you can't trust color descriptions anymore. "pinky beige" means peachy beige. "peachy nude" means light orangey brown. "baby pink" means orangey pink. words don't matter when all is orange.
this manufacturing trend would make a little more sense if everyone were still doing the bronzer pancake look, but they're not. what gives? it's gotta be something about the cost of blue pigment, right?
recession indicator?
anyway, the other day i went to walgreen's, saw a tube of aqua blue lip gloss, and bought it in a fit of pique. (what's the opposite of orange on the traditional color wheel?) it's not a strong presence, but it does cool the color temperature of whatever it's worn over. the texture isn't sticky or gross, it's pretty long-wearing, and the spatula applicator is nice. 10/10. probably going to finish the tube in a couple months and buy another.
i don't think anyone on bearblog will give a shit, but somebody's gotta beautypost: the product is NYX jelly job in the shade "jelly frost."