Off The Cuff: Read my lipstick, read my lips

Ads and serious literature, more and more these days, are working on the maxim, "Show, don't tell". The visual must be strong enough to hint at, but not do all your thinking for you. Which is jolly good, really.

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Ads and serious literature, more and more these days, are working on the maxim, "Show, don't tell". The visual must be strong enough to hint at, but not do all your thinking for you. Which is jolly good, really. Great for the imagination, it also gives the intellect a feel-good massage. Two people can sometimes look at an ad and go away with their own interpretation of what it is trying to convey.

It happened to me, recently, as I drove past an ad of a woman sporting the zaniest lipstick that has ever adorned a pair of lips. Two-toned – pink and white, I'm sure. Maybe scarlet and white. White, definitely. The colours were applied sequentially, from east to west of mouth, or vice-versa, depending on which direction your eye favours moving. I'll admit this much, though. It got me to sit up and take note.

After that, it freed my imagination into the wide blue strata above and off I went. You see, at the very first glimpse, I thought the woman had her mouth sutured. Pink and white. Flesh and thread. Hullo, hullo, I remember thinking, what have we here? That's a powerful symbol, and is this woman trying to say something through those lips? Perhaps sending us men a very discreet message?

We're back, we're yours, are we forgiven? Gee, I thought, not without a little shiver of horror, if only Germaine Greer were to set eyes on that, she'd add an entire chapter to the next edition of The Female Eunuch, exhorting the Sisterhood not to abandon their ideals just when it seemed like a total, annihilating victory was at hand. Up, girls, guard the ramparts, and all that.

Now I do know that us men, centuries ago, in our own clumsy way attempted lowering the "masculine bar" a fraction. We went through our "powdered wig" phase and later the hippie Flower Power thing. But men generally did regress a bit strongly back to machismo, after the Women's Lib thing took wing.

But now, with this potent feminine allusion (Women's Lip), I got to pondering…if all this were true, and women wanted to chuck in the towel on liberation and such stuff, how would man respond? Via an ad, that is. How would he choose to symbolically present his case? How would he say, look, let me show you a thing or two about meeting you half-way. Given that the ad must only "show" and not "tell", this is what I think he would get the ad-men to do on his behalf.

One day, when you are driving down a highway, you'll spot this rather large billboard, showing a well-furnished sitting room, subtly lit in cosy, autumnal family tones. A man will be seated in a plush, spacious arm chair, his feet up on a rest before him. And before the foot-rest, the television will be showing a chef hard at work in the kitchen on a dish of oysters.

On a table beside the man in the sitting room, where once used to stand an iced can of frothy beverage, will now be a steaming cup of Chinese mint tea. The clock on the wall will indicate 8 pm!! The man's right arm will be thrown casually over the low arm-rest, but it is the fingers that you will notice. They will be reaching out and fondling the ears of his wife's pet poodle, named Obedience. You will notice this from the dog collar it wears (the poodle, not the man).

But I'll tell you this: Once that concept comes to pass; once the last bastion falls, the purveyors of all things unisex will witness the kind of boom in sales that we commonly term "unprecedented". With that in mind, I've got to dash. I need to locate some old photographs taken in those Flower Power years. I do recall, in the distant past, experimenting with dreadlocks one holiday. Might as well stay prepared.

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