My Lip Gloss Is Poppin'

We Have To Do This

As promised everyone, here we go on another fanchapstic voyage through the nether regions -- the bowels -- of traitorous radio to give you a lil' insight into lil' mamas and lil' papas everywhere who just can't get enough petroleum gel on their oral orifice.

Lil' Mama, an apparent cross between a thirteen-year-old girl and a forty-year-old woman, is lately jammin everyone's radio frequencies with a lil' raspberry called "Lip Gloss":



You are hearing correctly:

Lil' Mama's Mama: Mama, what's wrong?
Lil' Mama: I just want to be part of the cool crowd. I just feel like I don't have what it takes.

Lil' Mama's mama calls Lil' Mama "Mama."

Moving on.

. . .

The radio version of "Lip Gloss" is a ballad of love dedicated to that shit ladies smear on their lips. Direct and straightforward, the song articulates a clear thesis ("My lip gloss is poppin'") then illustrates this idea with numerous specific examples (the principal verse).

Things get a bit crazy when Mama ties her lip gloss to her identity: "What you know bout me?" All you need to know is that Mama's lip gloss is poppin'.

This reminds me of the early high-school days when girls were 14, not a girl, not yet a woman, starting to wear short shorts to school and meaning it, some even had A- or B-cups, they started heaving on the makeup in the morning, getting ready sexually for whatever was coming -- they didn't really know, but they knew that they'd better get at it. At the same time, though, these chickadees are still going home and cutting out photos of Cam'ron or Justin Timberlake and taping them to their walls. They're still hiding their Lisa Frank stuff in the closet when their friends come over to hang out. They still talk to their teddy bears.

They wear lip gloss by the gallon.

Their parents can't carry enough crates to their room. They practically bathe in the shit. They smell like cherries and cough syrup wherever they go.

People start to take notice.

Only one consumer product known to man is so comfortably nestled between the excitement of emergent sexuality and pre-pubescent "Pretty Pretty Princess": Lip gloss.

It goes on your mouth, that part of your body that's gonna be getting a lot of attention soon. It serves a medical purpose. Mama can't deny daughter a lil' lip gloss, you need protection from the sun and chapped lips. It's like fifteen cents for one lil' tube.

What Lil' Mama has hit on more effectively and subtly than any teeny-bop sensation of the New Era age (ballcaps) is just how fine a line girls tread now that hetero dudes don't have to pass around Playboys.

Think Spice Girls, shouting "Girl Power" but wearing bondage gear. Then think Britney, wearing schoolgirl outfits and yelling "Hit Me Baby One More Time," making a thing of her virginity.

Then look at Lil' Mama. Whereas the former ladies practiced a kind of doublespeak to help girls negotiate the parameters of womanhood, Lil' Mama simply occupies the space. This is evinced even in her contradictory name, her video-mother's hermeneutic confusion, and the ultimate message conveyed in the video.

Mama's mama says basically "It was inside you the whole time." Lip gloss is just a magic feather. In one sense, this is an unconvincing case of the video "going Dumbo." Who really believes the magical lip gloss that made the lockers autonomously pound to the beat of Mama's music had nothing to do with her popularity? In another sense, though, the message is more nuanced: This lip gloss that you wear is a signifier for the thing inside you that's about to blossom into some serious sexual power. In a couple weeks, you aren't going to need that stuff, because you will have a butt.

A bigger butt.

A poppin' butt.