I Put on This $4 Lip Balm to Show the World I Haven’t Given Up

Because I’m both incredibly vain and incredibly lazy, I’ve always had a fraught relationship with makeup. I would love to look as good as my friends who follow YouTube tutorials and understandcontouring, but I can’t ever seem to make myself spend more than three minutes in front of themirror. This is due to a potent combination of ADD, hating my bathroom’s lighting, lifelong chronic impatience with fiddly fine-motor tasks of all stripes, and the toddler standing outside the bathroom door shouting at me about how he is a chickenanda dinosaur.

But I also can’t leave the house without doing something to my face to show the world that I haven’t given up, and that’s whereWet n Wild MegaSlicks Lip Balm Stainenters the picture. My first Wet n Wild MegaSlicks Lip Balm Stain was given to me by one of my tutorial/contouring friends several years ago, and since then I have not bought or worn any other form of lipstick. The stain — let’s call it LBS for short — has so many words in its name because it really is several lip products in one. This LBS is a thick, stubby, crayon-shaped stick that cranks up in a tube, like a lip balm, but it goes on with a thin, unwaxy slickness that feels almost like a gloss, except not at all sticky. Unlike a lot ofdrugstore makeup, it has no harsh chemical or floral smell or flavor, only a very faint mintiness.

If I’m feeling fancy and want to look like I’mwearing lipstick, I look in the mirror while applying it, but in a pinch, I just smear some LBS on my bottom lip and smoosh my lips together for more of a natural, “this is just the color my lips are” situation.

And it really is a stain — it lasts for hours. Unlike every other stain I’ve ever tried, it doesn’t make my lips hurt or settle into the tiny cracks in their perimeter, in a way that makes me look old and crazy. I’ve had several colors in the pink/red family and they’re all good. (Don’t buy the ones that are lighter than the color of your lips because that makes no sense.) I last applied some of my Red-y or Not about five hours ago, and I just checked and it’s still there!