Why Wearing Dark Lipstick Will Always Make Me Feel Empowered And Bold

I feel sexiest in dark lipstick. The recipients of my naughtiest Snapchats must think I literally sleep in the stuff, because I only send nudes while wearing deepest berry tones.

If pitch-black lippies make me feel like a smoke show, I'm cool with it. However, those lipsticks do a little more than that. Recently, a friend of mine claimed my preference for wearing black lipstick (most recently, the one from Katy Perry's CoverGirl collection) made me seem "bitchy."

Katy Perry 'Perry Panther' Lipstick, $9, Ulta 

She wasn't the only one to have that thought. In a recent Refinery29 article, the author claimed wearing dark lipstick gave her a case of "bitch lips." Though she claimed to feel strong and powerful, the idea that dark lipstick is somehow linked to being perceived as a bitch is jarring. Wearing black lipstick made the author feel "cooler, more badass"— adjectives that don't seem particularly synonymous with bitchiness. "Bitch lips" felt like kind of a leap.

Mystified, I asked a guy I was seeing what he thought. I tried to pose the question as innocently as I could, wondering, “What do you think of dark lipstick?”

He looked up at me, perhaps to see if I was wearing a dark lip. I wasn't — I had painted on a nude Kylie Jenner lip kit.

“It kind of looks prissy,” he said. “Girls that wear dark lipstick kind of come off as bitchy to me."

So, this was a thing. Apparently, I'd been giving out bitch vibes without ever knowing. I was shocked, and that's no understatement. How can my lips be an indicator of whether I'm a bitch or not? It doesn't make much sense.

In a 2013 survey by the Huffington Post, men admitted to being turned off by “goth, Hot Topic-levels” of lipstick and even said  “bold, unnatural” lipstick detracts from the attractiveness of women. To that, I say bullsh*t.

I feel sexiest when I'm wearing a dark lip. I'm unstoppable, badass, most prepared to handle whatever sh*t is flung at me. If me feeling confident is synonymous with looking and feeling like a bitch, so be it. I'll wear my MAC Lipmix in Black and everyone can get over it.

Lipmix in Black, $17.50, MAC 

Some people feel hottest wearing jeans or fancy Kiki de Montparnasse. To me, a swipe of a black lipstick does the same thing. It mysteriously makes my teeth look whiter and my face somehow more poreless. It pulls the eyes away from my messy hair and directly to my pout, which I'm into.

Besides, if I really do have a resting bitch face, I need some bitch lips to match.