Today I offer a meditation on the 2000s cultural power icon: Lancôme’s Juicy Tube. A generation's foray to makeup. Let’s consider together an object that stands as a symbol, an antique, a kind of doorway.
[From every conceivable angle, it was just lip gloss.]
In high school, a friend bestowed upon me two gifts, a Juicy Tube in the color “clear sheer” alongside the MAC single pan eyeshadow “pink haze.” I took this as a gift that said, “here you'll need these.” A license of another kind. Upon acquiring I wondered, actually, what was the Juicy Tube’s reason to be? It seemed just what it was, a juicy tube. But it required a new category; it wasn’t chapstick or lipstick, those were two things I could wrap my head around.
[The precursor]
It was a lacquer I found mysterious. For one, it lost all pigment once applied. For two, when would you need it? Surely not when you’d pull for chapstick. In addition, the Juicy Tube cost 16 US dollars, expensive then and now especially compared to the Lip Smackers that preceded them in our collective consciousness. Lip Smackers offered scents (flavors?) like vanilla frosting, blue raspberry, and a shocking pink cotton candy, appealing to children.
[Another loved object]
In fact, my prized possession had hitherto been a gumball machine made to dispense jelly beans. Like Lip Smackers, jelly beans were a collection you consumed, kind of plastic, colorful, also sold at the mall. Juicy Tube marketed with no such no food flavoring. It had the aesthetic of an ice cube.
[I wasn’t kidding.]
“The glistening hi-shine of Juicy Tubes,” my friend offers, when I ask what topic she’d like for me to write about as a guest author on the Best American Poetry blog. “Loved Juicy Tubes. Nothing like ‘em.”
All to say, the Juicy Tube linked being a kid to something I didn’t yet recognize. “Thelyphthoric” is a term I try to think through in my second book Morality Play (out soon from Poetry Northwest!) I certainly do not believe it’s as simple as “fashion magazines and pop stars were corrupting young girls!” but there was something sinister in the open-mouthed ads. Something cold, intimidating. I remember applying my Juicy Tube meticulously in algebra until my teacher slammed his palm on the table and shouted “HILGER” to make me stop. Is this the only memory I have of math that year? Of course I was mortified but, truly, I didn’t think of it as putting on makeup during class. I didn’t think of it as anything yet.
It was the novelty of something new and strange. High school can usher in an era of heightened insecurity, a lot of tears, a lot of struggling. For your author it certainly did. Maybe the Juicy Tube represented something so vapid and icy and untouchably beautiful that I could access that too. Adult in my mind, I carried around a real beauty brand in the pocket of my long, long jeans. I wore it to declare my connection with Britney checking her lip gloss in Crossroads. I wore it along with the brows of Edith Piaf, Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo.
In other words, it marked a moment – it spoke to something larger than I was. It offered assurance. It now lives eternal in the flash of printed photos from disposable cameras.
[shades of sheer]
I loved the Juicy Tube for being a signifier, ultimately, of innocence. Equally, I loved it for its minimalist claims – it did just what it said on the tin. Should you be selling a lip product in 2022’s beauty space and want to succeed amidst a saturation of high-quality indie lines from all over the world, celebrity brands, luxury makeup, your lip gloss better tout benefits. We’re talking plumping lip oils infused with vitamins and collagen. To really make a mark they need to be hydrating, vegan, cruelty free, sustainably created, ethically sourced, etc. Application should be effortless, should feel like nothing, be lightweight, easy to wear. Juicy Tubes, hate to say it, were the least comfortable option we had. Sticky, viscous, obvious. If a breeze blew a strand of hair toward your mouth you’d never recover. Were the early 2000s Juicy Tube a brand new product, would it find relevance today? It has since been brought back, pitched as an object of nostalgia. But what’s replaced it? To your author, nothing.
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