Candice Marie Benbow - Red Lip Theology : For Church Girls Whove Considered Tithing to the Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isnt Enough

BY MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY

Sin. Its the name of my favorite red lipstick.

Theres no doubt that MAC Cosmetics knew this color, a deep wine with hints of blue undertone, would be beloved by Black women. Which is what makes the name so bothersome. Sin. Really? Im all here for Naughty, Rowdy, or even Trouble, but it is downright mean to label a Black womans best red lipstick Sin.

Red lipstick is taboo for many girls raised in Black churches or reared in Black families and neighborhoods where religious mores determine collective norms even if the folks enforcing those norms arent tithing members in good standing of any actual congregation. Shamed for being fast, womanly, or too damn grown, Black girls are encouraged to stop doing so much or being extra.

Red lipstick is definitely extra.

Even when the bank account is empty or emotional resources are low, sisters are taught never to bring raggedy dresses, stockings, shoes, bags, belts, lashes, or nails into the house of the Lord. Were encouraged to adorn our sanctified smiles with a matte lip in taupe, cocoa, or coffee bean. Even a glossy mauve or spice is saintly perfection. But red? Never red. Its printed right there in the name: Sin.

Navigating a whole, entire, complicated, cray morality play of righteousness and rouged lips every time you step up to the makeup counter is exhausting. Surely, Black women who shoulder more than our fair share of child-rearing, church-building, community-gathering, bag-securing, and waymaking deserve a God better than some petty, distant patriarch policing our lip color.

Black girls deserve a magnificent, loving, immanent, and chill God. We need a God who loves our minds when we make deans list and when we peace-out on the PhD. We need a God who loves our hearts even when they are broken as a result of our foreseeably foolish choices. We know God will not shield us from agony when we lose our mama and will not always guard us from the evil of a sexual assault, but we need a God big enough to send our BFFs to our grieving chamber, to gently lure us to the makeup counter, and to help us choose a red lipstick so that we can see ourselves again.

We not only need a God who loves Black girls; we need a God who likes us. Us. Regular Black girls, with nappy hair, big hips, and red lips. Candice Marie Benbows Red Lip Theology is a road map to where we might find the God we needWinston-Salem, North Carolina.

Listen! I was just as shocked as I imagine you must be to learn this. A somewhat unremarkable city of a quarter million residents nestled in the North Carolina Piedmont, Winston-Salem is not a beach town or a mountain getaway. It isnt the states capital or its major metropolitan. The citys tobacco foundations are evident in the twin names that eventually became bestsellers for R. J. Reynolds.

Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!

Lord help us.

Winston-Salem is home of the arguably divine Krispy Kreme doughnuts, but that isnt why Benbows text uncovers God there. Benbow gets tight with God in Winston-Salem because it is where she finds herself. Benbow was raised in this city I now call home, where I am raising my own daughters. Indeed, my seven-year-old regularly introduces herself as Anna from Winston-Salem.

I roared with laughter when Benbow journeyed through JCPenney to the new side of the mall, shouted with recognition when she recounted Parkland High School football games, and church-lady hummed while giving a judgmental side-eye to the judgmental church folk she describes. Oh, the contradictions!

In short, I see myself in Candice. I feel her. The loving the wrong one. GIRL. The being over white folk in the academe. CHILE. The enduring scars of sexual assault. LISTEN. The losing the will to live. PREACH! The clinging to your squad cause they are all you got. HALLELUJAH.

Candice from Winston-Salem. Its just an ordinary Black-girl story. Which means, of course, it isnt ordinary at all.

Poet, playwright, artist, and author Ntozake Shange concludes her magnificent choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by writing:

i found god in myself

and i loved her,

I loved her fiercely.

Adapting Shange, Benbows subtitle signals that her text is an offering: For Church Girls Whove Considered Tithing to the Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isnt Enough. And like Shanges 1974 play, Red Lip Theology discovers the sacred during a pilgrimage through the profane. Benbows unflinching examination and compassionate appreciation of her own self and soul lead her to the same conclusion as Shangerecognition of the marvelous, messy, red-lip-loving God within.

And because we find ourselves in Benbow, we too find God in ourselves, and love herfiercely.

Melissa Harris-Perry is the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair in the Department of Politics and International Affairs and the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wake Forest University.