MOB WIFE No More

There's nothing tacky about it. All hail the return of the oldest trick in the book.

- ROXANNE ADAMIYATT

Renaissance art scholars will tell you that mastery of light and shadow-as perfected by Leonardo da Vinci and his compatriots-ushered in a new era of realism and emphasis on the human form. I was an art history major, but I had learned this truth long before I was exposed to the canon, by watching my mom apply her lip liner in our car when I was a child.

By the time I was old enough to wear makeup, the '90s nude-and accompanying near-flesh-tone liner-was out of vogue, replaced in the early aughts by glossy pouts and Lancôme Juicy Tubes. For a while it seemed that lip pencils might be consigned to the dustbin of makeup history...until social media came along. Now #lipliner clocks in at 3.4 billion views on TikTok. After years of plumping our pouts with filler, our infatuation with full kissers remains-but now the OG pencil is back to do the trick.