Lipstick

Dear Polly: I always used a little lipstick on my cheeks instead of paying more money for blush, but a friend told me this was bad for my skin. Is this true? - Pam Lipstick alone can clog your pores if used as blush. However, you can mix a little lipstick with your favorite moisturizer or skin cream, then smooth it over your cheeks for a delicate, skin-safe blush. You can also mix any cream- style blusher with moisturizing cream to make it easier to apply. This gives a softer, more delicate color that looks more natural than using straight color.

While everyone else has been gulping down gallons of Juice news, I have been thinking about men who wear lipstick. A recent Yankelovich Monitor survey on consumer values and attitudes revealed 10 percent of gay men wear lipstick. They may or may not also be drag queens or David Bowie. Them we know. But the survey also uncovered that 4 percent of straight men also paint their mouths. Apparently, they slather lipstick on boldly and without shame, because they told the Yankelovich interviewers this during a two-hour, face- to-face interview that covered 52 personal topics and took place in the 48 contiguous states.

Martin Agronsky, the venerable newsman and veteran host of a television talk show, was in a melancholy mood last week. How come? He was depressed by the commercialization of the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. "Schlock!" he groaned. "Too much schlock!" Horsefeathers! The kind of schlock that will be vended this weekend is as American as popcorn, as indigenous as grits and redeye gravy. For a price, souvenir hunters can find the image of the first lady of Liberty Island on beer mugs, coffee cups, thimbles and belt buckles.

You can't buy it here. In fact, you can hardly find it anywhere. The only way to get it is to put your name on a back order list at the company's stores in Manhattan. Since her "20/20" interview with Barbara Walters, Monica Lewinsky's lipstick has become all the rage. Thursday morning, "Good Morning America" mentioned that they were getting tons of e-mail requests about the former White House intern's makeup. Yesterday, the ABC show revealed the brand and color, sparking a mad rush for the sheer pink lipstick.

The word on the street - and we're not talking Wall - is that when hair gets cut, master's degrees awarded and lipstick bought, you better hold on to your new hats - the economy is headed south. Long before the National Bureau of Economic Research announced last week that we have been in a recession since March, barbers, college administrators and cosmetics saleswomen knew it. Their customers told them. "Consumers are really the ones who know what's going on first," said Joel Naroff, chief economist for Commerce Bank.

St. John's wort, which is being touted these days as an herbal alternative to Prozac, is popping up everywhere - in teas, capsules, elixirs - and would you believe tortilla chips? Or how about lipstick? St. John's wort, a centuries-old medicinal herb, is a key ingredient in Roberts American Gourmet brand tortilla chips, which are sold at Jonathan's Best Cheese in Chestnut Hill. It also has turned up in a new brand of lipstick made by Tony & Tina that's going to be available at Nordstrom's in King of Prussia beginning in May. "A lipstick that's an anti-depressant - what could be better?"

Mindy Tamaccio is supremely passionate about makeup. When informed that a client left a case containing all her worldly cosmetics in the backseat of a Boston taxi, Tamaccio asks seriously: "Do you think your insurance might cover it?" True, the makeup was expensive, but not that expensive. Wardrobe consultants have long helped folks pitch clothes that never worked and were rarely worn. Now, Tamaccio does the same for makeup. That is correct: She's a professional lipstick eliminator.

PUCKER UP. We're living in a lipstick economy. This, I was surprised to find out recently, is a dangerous thing. Don't blame the feminists for the current fear-mongering about lipstick sales, though. I happen to be one of those equal-rights gals - the proud-to-be-an-American, lipstick-wearing kind. We don't see what all the fuss is about. Just a few streaks of color here and there, a smack of the lips, and, wow! We feel better all ready. We all need a pick-me-up in a time of national crisis.

Donald Trump's fashion model wife is seeing red over a discount lipstick called "Ivana. " A lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court alleges that Pavion Ltd., a Nyack, N.Y.-based cosmetic company, wrongfully used the name "Ivana" in an effort to "palm off their goods as those of Trump. " In addition to asking $10 million in damages, Ivana wants the court to order Pavion to kiss her name goodbye. Pavion President Stanley Acker said his company, a 35-year-old firm that sells its products in drug and discount stores, never intended to trade on Ivana Trump's name.

Toting an umbrella, an unidentified pedestrian passed the "Split Button" sculpture in Blanch Levy Park at the University of Pennsylvania yesterday. The 16-foot, painted aluminum Claes Oldenburg piece is part of a public art collection spread around the country. The "Clothespin" at 15th and Market Streets is also the artist's work. The collection includes a 10-story baseball bat in Chicago, where it was sunny and just below freezing yesterday; a 24-foot lipstick at Yale University, where it was also raining; and a 45-foot pair of binoculars in Venice, Calif.

William Heirens, 83, who confessed to one of the most shocking slayings in Chicago's history and paid for it with more years of his life than any other Illinois state prison inmate, died Monday at a Chicago hospital after officials at Dixon Correctional Center found him unresponsive. Heirens was a 17-year-old University of Chicago student and petty burglar when he confessed to killing two women in 1945 - one was shot and stabbed, the other stabbed - and the abduction, slaying and dismemberment of a 6-year-old girl the next year.

It appears our warm-hued friend orange will color our world next year beyond the season of candy corn, cornucopias, and clementines. The color czars at Pantone last week named Tangerine Tango (or red-orange in the Crayola box) as the 2012 Color of the Year. Tangerine Tango is a specific mix of crimson with a dash of yellow. Commonly found in sunsets and Hermès prints, it will likely spice up our wardrobes, automobiles, and home decor in coming months. "Tangerine Tango takes on the spirit of red with the warmth and cheerfulness of yellow," explained Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the New Jersey-based Pantone Color Institute.

The ocean liner-size building that just docked on North Broad Street, complete with a big glass prow to soak up the afternoon sun, does not look like the sort that helps the environment. Sprawling across 20 acres, the Convention Center is essentially a big box of meeting rooms that need to be heated and cooled. Its roof is a lifeless Sahara, devoid of vegetation or solar panels. And yet the project is on track to earn a silver award from the U.S. Green Building Council. Somehow this does not compute.

By Leonard Boasberg Three younger Republican leaders in Congress have undertaken an effort to rebrand the Republican Party, hoping to unload the stigma of the Bush administration and memories of their party's failures. In a new book, Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders , they deliver a scathing critique of the Republican record. "We let the people down," says one of the trio, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican. The book does not make clear what new policies the young guns have in mind, but Cantor has given us a hint.

Lipstick smear "It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect. " - Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention. After falling behind in the polls, Obama has traded in the obligations of which he spoke so eloquently for an opportunity to smear Sarah Palin with the regrettable and offensive statement that "you can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. " Obama claimed it was not directed toward Palin but it came a week after Palin in her own acceptance speech said: "You know what they say is the difference between hockey moms and pit bulls?

"What is the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom? Lipstick. " - Sarah Palin, Sept. 3, 2008 TAKE that, Barack. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Hillary. Deal with it, Nancy - and Harry. Get ready to sweat. Sarah Barracuda is here. And she's headed to a town near you. On Wednesday night, the governor of Alaska showed the rest of America what John McCain already knew: She's definitely ready for prime time. And how. This pit bull in lipstick and stylish glasses made it clear that while she may have grown up in a small town, she has the instincts of a warrior.

My cosmetic bag is not a bag so much as it is a pouch. A pouch that is the height and width of a hardback book. A book about the width and weight of War and Peace. I am not a Las Vegas showgirl or a drag queen, and being a drama queen doesn't require a good foundation so much as a fine layer of melodrama. And yet, every morning, I have 18 eyeliners to choose from: powder, liquid and pencil, in several shades of brown (espresso, chocolate luster, cr?me brulee and teddy), celadon, green, dark blue, gray-blue, blue, something called Starry Plum, violet, silver, smoke, "gray utility," and a goth collection of black offerings.

The first time Morrissey called David Johansen to beg the New York Dolls front man to reconvene the group to play at the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London, which the Mozzer was curating, Johansen had two words for him: "Absolutely not. " " 'Oh, David, would you do it? Please, please, please, darling,' " says Johansen, doing a dead-on imitation of the leader of the Smiths. "I said, 'Where? Woodlawn?' " referring to the Bronx cemetery where two of the Dolls' key members, guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan, are buried (both died in 1991)

Fellas, beware - disappear and come back with chocolate if your girl has gotten to this essay. Forgive me, I was shot with truth serum before writing it. It seems every girl I've kissed since the eighth grade never knew what was really on my mind. Take Rebecca. She was the best girl basketball player in school and played with the boys during free play. She always owned her own ball. One time while guarding her, I reached to swipe the ball, yet the roundness I found gave me a shot of hormones from which I never recovered.

Mindy Tamaccio is supremely passionate about makeup. When informed that a client left a case containing all her worldly cosmetics in the backseat of a Boston taxi, Tamaccio asks seriously: "Do you think your insurance might cover it?" True, the makeup was expensive, but not that expensive. Wardrobe consultants have long helped folks pitch clothes that never worked and were rarely worn. Now, Tamaccio does the same for makeup. That is correct: She's a professional lipstick eliminator.