Get trendy! 

All you fashionistas out there have a new, very San Luis Obispo color of lipstick that will be available soon-ish. You can make those lips mighty! Mighty red, that is, with Heidi is Mighty Matte Lipstick.

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Yes, that’s named after SLO’s now iconic rose-adorned mayor, Heidi Harmon, whose red lip color will soon benefit RISE, a local nonprofit that helps victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. A dollar out of the $21 you will spend to buy those #lookgooddogood lips will go to the SLO-based organization. Awesome idea!

But who gets the other $20? 

I was thinking we could take another $1 of that lipstick purchase and donate it to the SLO Police Department for training on how to speak with victims of sexual assault, because they need to step up their game. I haven’t heard a peep from the department about my buddy SLOPD Sgt. Chad Pfarr or his comments about how sexual assault victims “conjure up” sexual assaults because they get too drunk. I also never heard anything out of women’s rights advocate Mighty Heidi about how she’s going to work with her buddy SLOPD Police Chief Deanna Cantrell to ensure that the number of sexual assault cases successfully prosecuted out of the city of SLO increases. 

The numbers are mighty sad. With 81 reports of alleged sexual assaults in the city in 2016, and less than a handful of those prosecuted, maybe it’s time law enforcement changes its approach. If we can be the first city to ban smoking in public, maybe we can also be the first city to treat sexual assault cases in a manner that actually punishes the perpetrator.

Potentially, Bluebird Salon, which came up with the mighty lips concept, can have a whole line of colors to benefit other #lookgooddogood causes. I’m actually a little jealous I didn’t come up with the idea, but red really isn’t my color. 

I vote for a Shred Your Friends For Being NIMBYs line! Metallic purple looks really good above these sexy keys. Plus, it’s very punk rock. And that’s so hot right now! We can put out an accompanying hair dye in the same exact color. You know you want metallic purple highlights. It’s way cooler than the gray hair that some millennials are rocking these days, which I don’t understand at all! 

It’d be a great package deal that you buy for all your friends who rag on poverty, homelessness, and affordable housing in their neighborhoods while simultaneously bitching about the cost of living on the Central Coast! We can put $5 of every purchase into funding affordable housing with People’s Self-Help Housing. We can take another $5 and put it toward providing homeless services with the 5 Cities Homeless Coalition. And another $5 can go toward the SLO County Jail fund to build a mental health unit! But first, I want to see that damn report to the county on what exactly needs to change over there to prevent deaths like Andrew Holland’s. Mum’s still the word on that from the county, which is no surprise. 

That darn Code of Silence seems to be super trendy right now. 

You know what’s also trendy? The county’s brand spanking new Code of Civility. It’s all the rage among our elected officials right now! You know what it needs? A lip color. I vote for lip gloss in hot pink. We can call it Civility Rules! and everyone who so courageously signed their name to the county’s regional pledge to be civil to one another should have to wear it. That way it’s easier for SLO County 3rd District Supervisor Adam Hill to remember not to yell at 5th District Supervisor Debbie Arnold during a public meeting. He’ll see that ’80s sheen of pink, iridescently glowing in the halogen-tinted light, and remember to hold it in. Instead, he’ll say, “Debbie, I hear you, but I completely disagree because we live on ideologically separate planets.” 

I, for one, believe that SLO County Board of Supervisors Chair John Peschong would look absolutely fabulous with neon-tinted lips. And once Civility Rules! hits that mouth, every conservative in the county will be scrambling to buy it and wear it.

We can hike up the price by another $20, and put it toward the county roads that didn’t get repaired because the self-help tax failed in 2016—in part thanks to that hip, happening trend-setter John “the anti-tax man” Peschong. Those soon to be glossy-lipped members of the Republican Party of SLO are gunning for the gas tax on the November ballot. If they’re successful, the Cholame “Y” interchange is going to need all the donations it can get. That project is Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham’s baby. Maybe he needs a tube of Civility Rules! too.

Those North County folks can also buy the most moist blue lip stain imaginable with a shade made just for them: Water Banking is for Losers. We can take $3 from every purchase of the ocean-colored stick and put it in a Resnick Rehabilitation Fund to buy the acres and acres of land that Justin Vineyards razed to the ground in 2015. We could put it in a conservation easement and bring it back to environmental health. Yeah, we have no idea what’s going on with that controversial piece of ground, either. The Wonderful Company doesn’t want to talk about it. ∆

The Shredder believes civility and lip color aren’t mutually exclusive. Send comments to [email protected].