The Lipstick Papers: ALL SORTS OF WONDERFUL RELATED SEARCHES

One of the most powerful, for me, scenes in English literature happens before a dressing table! I am referring to the scene in Great Expectations, where the protagonist Pip begs Estella not to marry the villain Bentley Drummle. Pip weeps openly, his hot tears falling on Estella's hands. The two are standing in Miss Havisham's wrecked boudoir, in front of the dilapidated dressing table, and with the spectral figure of Miss Havisham observing them horrified.

Great Expectations is a novel with strong Gothic elements. Here I am next to an antique but by no means dilapidated dressing table! This 60s and 70s tall style is fantastic. I love dressing tables at least as much as I love writing desks. Google "dressing table" and you get all sorts of wonderful related searches: "makeup vanity table", "vanity table with lights", "vanity table with lighted mirror"! You think nothing but glamor, beauty, fame! Bliss!!!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art held a dressing table exhibition from December 2013 to April 2014. The website entry has a history of the dressing table: it began as an ornament box in antiquity and reached its luxury apogee in 17th century France, where the poudreuse and shave table resulted in what we know today as the dressing table.

The term vanity table has misogynistic undertones for me and I never use it. Misogynists undermine women for wanting to look beautiful, consider beautiful women as silly, but salivate when they see a beautiful or sexy woman. Hypocrisy anyone? Myself, as a lipstick feminist, declare that women have a right to beauty!

In Great Expectations, Miss Havisham fell victim to love and was ruined by a love affair. However, it seems clear in the novel that things could have been otherwise- she could, and should, have chosen to recover and love again. Pip and Estella eventually get a second chance to build a life from the start.

Have a good night, always with beauty and a book!