Lipstick, bubbles and politics

I grew up in the 50s in a New England middle class town. It was a safe but static environment with known social rules according to my mother. Disobedience would label me "cheap" with unspoken consequences.

One such rule was as a young teenager, lipstick was a no-no, although, I could wear Tangee  Lipstick which was designed to heighten natural color. It was almost an orange Chapstick. It was like imitation lipstick but better than nothing.

 

By mid teens, I was able to wear regular lipstick. Each month I would eagerly await my latest Seventeen magazine with wonderful clothes and ads for lipsticks with such name as Fire and Ice.

I grew up in a bubble of knowns. Ike was president. My mother never even met anyone who voted for Roosevelt until she was in her late 30s. McCarthy was going to save us from Communism. Everything America did was good.

It took decades and a lot of reading to discover that some of what I was taught in school was true, but there was a lot missing. It was things like listening to a Palestinian, the first I ever met, to see there was another side to what Israel had been saying. That was in 1967.

As I moved to other countries, read more and more, I discovered what had been missing from my education about the world.

Today, I'm fascinated with the half truths and out right lies put forth by politicians and government leaders. They seem to forget when they say, "Red is green," they've been captured on video saying at different times, "Red is yellow," and even more far from the truth "Red is ice cream or a tree or an animal or, or, or."

Those, who live in their own bubbles not unlike my childhood bubble, who limit their news sources become bleating sheep to the lies.

I am lucky by living inter nationally, meeting people who are directly responsible for the news, including a few presidents and reading volumes and volumes of history, politics, watching news from several countries, I no longer live in a bubble. I also do not wear lipstick.