The Lipstick Trick

Mrs Bovary - 6 Jun 14

Do you remember back when The Oprah Show was heavily into the Desperate Housewife Makeover bit? Concerned friends of a woman buried under a heap of washing in Wisconsin would write to her to say:

“Help us, Oprah. Our girl Loretta has let herself go. Her hair is real bad. Her skin is real bad. Her clothes are real bad. She don’t make no effort no more. She used to be so beautiful.”

Then a camera crew breaks into a house to find this woman etherized on the floor while fifteen kids jump up and down on her. A dog does a poo on the carpet. The oven explodes and the ceiling caves in.

The camera pans back to Oprah who sort of goes ‘Holy Crap’ with her eyebrows. Then they wheel out the housewife who stands hunched in the middle of the stage with a ferret nibbling at her neck. The audience shrieks. Three people appear who verbally abuse her. Hair: Imma need me an axe to get through this thicket. Make-up: Girl, your moustache is thicker than the Colonel’s.  Clothes: Cirque du Soleil called. They want their tent back. And then they abduct and torture her.

She returns. It is a miracle. Desperate housewife is transformed into Helen of Troy. She looks like she could really be a Somebody. Look at those cheekbones. Look at that arch. And those lips; bright red and bee-stung. Luminescent. Transformative. She belongs on a bar stool in Manhattan, clasping a Dirty Martini, examining a spreadsheet.

And then a terrible sadness strikes. The audience wails. Don’t make her go back to Wisconsin. She’s going to die out there. But they shove her into a limo anyway, prising her hands off the doors with a jumbo pair of tweezers. She submits, resigned to her fate. She stares blankly out of the window like Holly Golightly going back to the farm and 1,000 miles later she pulls up to see her children and the sweaty, indolent, balding husband all loitering around the front door, frowning.

Turn around please, Driver.

Two weeks later desperate housewife is back in a velour tracksuit, combing her tash with the garden rake while the triplets gnaw at her ankles. It was a pyrrhic metamorphosis.

That was always the flaw of the telly makeover. It was only ever superficial. They never dug down to the cause. Why had desperate housewife let herself go in the first place?  Could it be, perhaps, that she needed something more from life; something that would make her shine from within, not just without? Something less ephemeral than the bronzing powder they dusted on her back in the studio like icing sugar concealing a cracked lemon tart.

Take the Dirty Martini Highway, lady! Work out what is going to get you up off the floor and go for it and don’t give in. And while you’re doing that there is always bright red lipstick. Apply readily. For if your lips are rocking, Oprah won’t come a-knockin’.

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Mrs Bovary

Mrs. Bovary is a brilliant illustrator, who lives in London and is mother to Hubert, 3. Discover her new greetings cards Atelier Bovary. Trust us you'll never want to buy any other cards again.

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