Nine Husbands of Aunt Ida and the Red Lipstick Legacy

A red mouth can enter a room before the woman wearing it says a word.

Mine has done that for most of my life. Before the introductions, before the handshakes, before anyone decided whether I was charming, difficult, useful, dangerous, or some combination of all four, there was that clean sweep of red. It stayed when surnames changed. It stayed when addresses changed. It stayed when men came and went. It stayed when the world insisted a woman should soften herself to be accepted. And not every woman can wear red.

I was born Munnerlyn Edison in 1932 in Asheville, North Carolina. That name belongs to my beginning. The name most people came to know me by, though, is Aunt Ida. It started as a government codename, the kind of thing meant to conceal rather than reveal. Funny how life works. Of all the names handed to me, taken by me, borrowed by marriage, or returned with a sigh of relief, Aunt Ida became the one that fit.

It was plain. It was warm. It sounded harmless. That's what made it useful.

My lipstick worked the same way.

A red lipstick can hold a whole life in its small metal case.

The codename that became more honest than a surname

A codename is supposed to be a mask. In my case, it became a mirror.

“Aunt Ida” had a domestic sound, the kind of name that could belong to a woman who baked pies, remembered birthdays, and kept a drawer full of peppermints. That was part of its genius. Nobody trembles at the thought of Aunt Ida. Nobody expects Aunt Ida to be listening from the next room, reading the silence between sentences, or walking away with the one detail everyone else missed.

Names have always carried weight for women. They introduce us before we arrive. They tell other people which family has claimed us, which man we married, which branch of a tree they think we belong to. For a long stretch of history, a woman’s name was treated less like a personal possession and more like a mailing label, something to be replaced when she moved from one life to another.

I learned early that a last name could open doors, but it could also lock them.

Over the years, I collected marital surnames the way some people collect scarves. Some looked fine in the mirror but scratched at the neck. Some suited the season but not the woman. Some were useful for a time, then became impossible to wear without remembering the argument attached to them.

I have joked that I “shoplifted” surnames through marriage. I slipped into each one, gave it a turn in the light, and decided whether it belonged in my closet. Most did not. A name can be perfectly respectable and still not be yours. A name can be attached to a good family and still sit badly on your shoulders.

After nine husbands, I knew something about the fine print of identity. I knew how a person could be praised for folding herself neatly into someone else’s story. I knew how quickly affection could become possession. I knew, too, the strange relief of setting a name down and walking away lighter.

That is my name Aunt Ida stayed.

It was not inherited. It was not assigned by a husband. It did not try to explain my place in a man’s family. It came from work, from nerve, from usefulness, from the parts of myself I had earned. Strange as it sounds, a codename felt more intimate than a married name because it belonged to my actions.

Aunt Ida was not the name of a wife. It was a job title I did well.

Aunt Ida was the name of a woman who knew what she was doing.

Red lipstick was never just decoration

People who dismiss lipstick as vanity have not been paying attention.

Red pigment has sat on lips, cheeks, cloth, seals, uniforms, and flags for thousands of years. It has marked rank, beauty, rebellion, danger, celebration, and desire. It has been praised, banned, taxed, traded, preached against, and worn anyway. That kind of history does not attach itself to a simple cosmetic by accident.

In ancient Egypt, red color on the face could signal status and style. Men and women used cosmetics, and elite beauty practices often carried social meaning. Later, in different societies, lip color moved in and out of favor depending on religion, class, politics, and fashion. Some eras treated painted lips as suspicious. Others treated them as fashionable. The mouth, especially a red mouth, kept attracting rules.

Rules are often a sign that power is nearby.

By the early 20th century in the United States, red lipstick carried a sharp public meaning. During the women’s suffrage movement, some activists embraced bold lip color as part of a wider visual language of independence. In 1912, suffragists marching in New York helped turn red lipstick into a modern symbol of defiance and visibility. It said a woman did not have to disappear to be respectable.

That matters.

A bare mouth can be beautiful. A red mouth can be beautiful, too. The difference is not moral. The difference is choice. For me, choosing red was never about asking to be admired. It was about deciding how I would enter the day.

There is a discipline to applying it. You cannot slap on red lipstick half-awake and expect mercy. Red asks for a steady hand. It asks you to pay attention to the line between what you reveal and what you keep to yourself. It punishes carelessness and rewards patience.

That suited me.

In my line of work, the difference between careless and composed could change the outcome of a room. A woman with red lipstick could be underestimated in several useful ways. Some saw glamour and stopped looking for intelligence. Some saw femininity and forgot to watch for strategy. Some saw age, especially later, and assumed softness. Let them.

A good red mouth can be a decoy, a signature, and a promise all at once.

The insect behind the color

Here is a fact that still startles people at dinner parties: some of the most beautiful reds in the world have come from insects.

Cochineal is a tiny scale insect that lives on prickly pear cactus. For centuries, people in the Americas used cochineal to create a rich red dye. The dye comes from carminic acid, which the insects produce as a defense. When processed, it can become carmine, a colorant still used in some foods, cosmetics, and other products.

There is something wonderfully unsettling about that.

The glamorous red on a glass of candy, a bottle of dye, or a tube of lipstick may have begun as a small creature clinging to cactus in the sun. Beauty often has a stranger origin than we like to admit.

After Spain colonized parts of the Americas, cochineal became a highly prized export. European markets wanted strong reds, and cochineal produced a color more intense than many available dyes. It became valuable enough to attract smugglers, rivals, and raiders. British privateers and pirates targeted Spanish trade, and dye cargo could be worth stealing.

Red traveled with empire, commerce, violence, fashion, and appetite. It colored cloth and status. It crossed oceans. It entered uniforms and portraits. It became part of the visual language of power.

Some stories connect cochineal to British military reds. The full history of red uniforms involves several dyes, including madder and cochineal, depending on period, fabric, cost, and supply. Some stories also link early American flag-making to available red dyes of the era, though the details are harder to pin down. What is certain is this: red dye was not a minor matter. People traded it, fought over it, regulated it, and wore it as a sign.

Carmine remains approved for use in many products in the United States, though labeling rules matter because some people avoid it for allergies, dietary reasons, religious concerns, or simple personal preference. The idea of wearing crushed insects can make a person pause. I understand that. I also understand that human beings have always found color in the earth, in plants, in minerals, and yes, in living creatures.

For me, the cochineal story adds weight to red lipstick. It reminds me that beauty is rarely clean, simple, or innocent. It has a supply chain. It has a history. It has hands behind it.

A red lip is not just a red lip.

It is botany, trade, chemistry, conquest, labor, taste, discomfort, choice, and memory pressed into a small tube.

The history of red often begins far from the dressing table.

Surnames are labels, but character is evidence

There is a particular kind of silence that falls after a woman says she has had nine husbands.

People begin counting without moving their lips.

I never minded. Curiosity is human. Judgment is human, too, though less attractive in poor lighting. If someone wanted to make a moral inventory out of my marriage record, that was their hobby, not mine.

Each marriage taught me something. Some lessons were tender. Some were expensive. Some arrived late at night with a suitcase half-packed. I learned what charm can hide. I learned what loneliness can persuade a person to overlook. I learned that a ring can be both a promise and a distraction.

Most of all, I learned that changing a surname does not change the self beneath it.

A name may affect how the world files you. It may affect bank accounts, invitations, introductions, passports, property, and Christmas cards. It may please a spouse or soothe a family. It may even give a person a fresh start. I do not dismiss that. A chosen name can be powerful.

But a name that is expected, pressured, or inherited without question can become a costume.

I wore several costumes. Some were pretty. Some were practical. A few were absurd. None of them made me more loyal, more loving, more honest, or more capable than I already was. None of them saved a weak marriage. None of them repaired a man who did not wish to be repaired. None of them turned me into the version of a wife someone else had in mind.

That is where red lipstick became a useful teacher.

A surname can be placed on you by ceremony. Lipstick must be applied by your own hand.

That small act mattered. I could stand before a mirror after disappointment, after paperwork, after an argument, after another round of explaining myself, and draw the line again. The gesture said, “I am still here.” It did not solve everything. Paint is not a cure. Still, ritual has power when life has made a mess of your name.

Some people pray. Some make coffee. Some weed the garden. I have done all three. Then I put on lipstick.

Why red unsettles people

Red is never neutral.

It is the color of blood, warning signs, cardinals, roses, stoplights, lipstick, fire trucks, and fresh cherries. It can signal danger or devotion. It can look holy in stained glass and scandalous on a collar. It can mean celebration in one setting and alarm in another.

That is why people react to it.

A woman wearing red lipstick may hear that she looks confident, glamorous, severe, theatrical, seductive, old-fashioned, too young, too bold, or just right. The same mouth can invite praise at lunch and criticism by supper. The lipstick has not changed. The viewer has.

Red reveals other people’s assumptions.

Some believe a woman should not call attention to herself. Some believe age should fade quietly into beige. Some believe seriousness must look plain. Some believe femininity and intelligence are rivals. I have never trusted those people with the full truth.

A red mouth refuses to apologize for being seen.

That refusal helped me in rooms where I needed to be dismissed and remembered at the same time. It is a tricky balance. Too forgettable and you vanish from the story. Too noticeable and people study you too closely. Red lipstick offered a strange middle path. It gave people something obvious to notice, which often kept them from noticing something else.

They remembered the lipstick.

Good.

Let them remember the lipstick.

The private armor of a public face

Every person who has lived long enough has some form of armor.

Mine happened to come in a tube.

That does not mean I was never afraid. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is fear that has somewhere to stand. For me, the mirror often became that place. I would look at my own face, older some mornings than I preferred, and restore the part of me that knew how to proceed.

There is a reason rituals survive hard years. They give the body instructions before the mind catches up.

Twist the tube.

Lean toward the glass.

Trace the bow of the lip.

Blot once.

Check the teeth.

Go.

The steps are small, but they create order. They tell the nervous system that the day has begun and that the person in the mirror has not surrendered. Red lipstick did not make me powerful by itself. It reminded me where I had stored my power.

Clothes can do that. Perfume can do that. A hat, a pair of boots, a necklace from a grandmother, a clean shave, a lucky pen, a pressed handkerchief, all of these can become anchors. The object is not the point. The meaning is.

My red lipstick meant I was ready to be underestimated.

It meant I had chosen my face before anyone else could define it.

It meant Aunt Ida had arrived.

The long life of a chosen signature

The older I became, the less patience I had for borrowed identities.

That is one gift of age. The world may try to make older women feel invisible, but age can sharpen the appetite for truth. After enough departures, recoveries, funerals, reconciliations, bad bargains, and beautiful mornings, a person becomes less willing to wear what pinches.

I kept the red.

Not because I wished to look young. That is a dull ambition. I kept it because it still looked like me.

The shade changed over time. Some reds were blue-toned and cool, good for evenings and hard decisions. Some leaned toward brick, more forgiving in daylight. Some were glossy and dangerous near white napkins. Some were matte enough to survive coffee, conversation, and a minor emotional crisis.

Each one had a season.

People like to talk about a “signature” as if it is a fixed thing. I see it differently. A signature is not a prison. It is a thread of recognition. The handwriting may shake a little with age. The lipstick line may soften. The face may change. The self still signs.

That is what the Red Lipstick Legacy means to me.

It is not about one brand, one tube, one beauty rule, or one correct shade. It is the story of how a small object can carry a large refusal. Refusal to disappear. Refusal to be renamed into obedience. Refusal to let history belong only to generals, husbands, kings, and official documents.

A legacy can be grand, carved into stone and argued over by historians.

It can also be left on the rim of a coffee cup.

What Aunt Ida knows now

If I could speak to the girl born Munnerlyn Edison in Asheville in 1932, I would not warn her away from every mistake. Some mistakes introduced me to myself. Some heartbreaks cleared the room. Some wrong names taught me the value of the right one.

I would tell her this:

• Keep your birth name somewhere safe, even if life asks you to carry others.

• Never confuse being chosen with being owned.

• Let people underestimate you when it serves the mission.

• Learn the history of the things you love.

• Do not apologize for the color that helps you stand upright.

  
  

I would also tell her to buy two tubes when she finds the right red, because companies have no loyalty and will discontinue the very thing that has held your life together.

Aunt Ida began as a cover. Over time, it became a truth. It held the contradiction I came to cherish: warmth and danger, sweetness and strategy, a familiar name on an unfamiliar woman. It fit better than any surname I borrowed because it did not ask me who claimed me. It asked what I could do.

The lipstick was similar. It did not ask permission. It did not explain itself. It simply made its mark.

Names matter, but they are not the whole of identity. Beauty matters, but it is never only surface. History matters, especially when it hides inside ordinary objects. A tube of red lipstick can contain insects, empire, rebellion, vanity, chemistry, memory, and nerve.

It can also contain a woman’s quiet decision to remain herself.

So when people ask why I still wear red, I smile before I answer. The smile is part of it, of course. The lipstick makes sure they notice.

I wear red because it has outlasted husbands, aliases, fashions, and fear.

I wear red because Aunt Ida would look strange without it.

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF NINE HUSBANDS OF

AUNT IDA