Red Hot Lips

The Fly Lady recommends beginning each day by "getting dressed to lace up shoes." Roughly this means that each day should begin with a shower, getting fully dressed, doing your make up and hair, and then finally putting on your shoes. Of course she doesn't simply recommend any type of shoe; she recommends lace up shoes. The entire point of all this is that you will feel better about yourself if you do these things at the beginning of each day, feeling better about yourself will help you to be more productive, and doing these things will prepare you for whatever your day has in store for you. I like and agree with this idea completely.

I, however, own only 2 pairs of lace up shoes (tennis shoes and biking shoes) and neither of these shoes are terribly appropriate for the majority of what I wear day in and day out. Therefore I have pretty much opted out of the getting dressed to lace up shoes and replaced it with getting dressed to red hot lips. It is pretty much the same idea only I finish myself off with some red hot lips.

Red hot lips, though, have been a fairly new thing to me and have definitely taken some getting used to. However, as several 9 year old girls at church make regular comments to me about how nice my lipstick is (and if a 9 year old girl doesn't know what is fashionable, who does, right?), I believe it is something I will stick with.

Of course, in addition to learning to re-recognize myself in the mirror with my red hot lips I have found myself wondering about lipstick etiquette. Namely, is it okay to reapply lipstick in public?

A quick google search reveals that there is a bit of a continental divide on the issue. Apparently it is just fine to reapply lipstick in public in Europe. However, it would seem that there are some limitations to when it is appropriate to reapply lipstick in public in the US. For instance, if you are at a very nice restaurant or at a business lunch/dinner you should never reapply your lipstick in public. If, though, you are at just a nice restaurant with friends or family you may quickly reapply lipstick but never lip liner. (I found nothing on what is appropriate at McDonald's) However, there seems also to be an American line of reasoning that says if you can see a bathroom from where you are sitting you should use it to reapply your lipstick.

I am personally leaning toward the basic American standard here, but I would love hear/learn from your wisdom on this issue.