Many women do not feel confident about wearing a bright shade of red lipstick on their lips. Most of them think that a red lipstick is far too luminous and showy for them, and that it calls too much attention on their lips. Some think that such a brilliant shade of lipstick would make them look clownish and unattractive.

What only makeup artists and a few women know is that red lipstick can make the lips very alluring if applied correctly. Red lipstick can make the lips look plump, sexy and very kissable. But on a deeper level, lips painted a bright shade of red evoke an instinct in men that is hard-wired into them already and will most likely remain within them despite millennia of continuous evolution.

You see, in prehistoric times, a woman's beauty is judged by how healthy she looks. Anthropologically speaking, a woman is considered beautiful if her body is amply fleshed out, with wide hips that can carry a fetus to term and full breasts that can produce enough milk to feed a newborn baby. A healthy woman also has flushed skin and reddish lips, which means she has good blood circulation.

By instinct, men look for women who look healthy enough to breed children for them, and red lips are just one of those signs that tell them a woman is such. The idea may sound crude to our modern-day sensibilities, but that is just how it is with men. Red lipstick applied to the lips makes a woman attractive to men.

As much as women shy away from wearing red lipstick because it looks showy and obvious, there is actually a way of applying it to the lips that will make the red subtle enough and will not make it appear garish. To achieve this, there are two factors that you need to consider, namely the tone of your skin and the size of your lips.

A principle in wearing red lipstick is that the paler your skin is, the bigger your lips would look like when you apply red lipstick on them. So, you should match the hue of your lipstick with the tone of your skin. If your skin is light and pale with pinkish tones, you are better off using plum reds. If your skin is dark and with tones of yellow, then you should go for a red lipstick mixed with brown shades.

Because red lipstick makes the lips appear bigger and plumper than what they really are, you should also consider the size of your lips when choosing a shade of red lipstick. If your lips are thin, you are safe with the bright reds. If your lips are thick and full, the shade of red lipstick that you should choose should have mixes of brown or blue.

Now that you know how to choose what kind of red lipstick you should wear, how then should you wear it? Applying red lipstick on the lips is just like painting – you have to prepare the canvass on which you will brush the paint. This is a principle in the application of makeup.

So, before you apply red lipstick on your lips, dab on a light coat of foundation on your lips, and then brush on a bit of face powder on top of the foundation. This will give your lipstick a polished look when you are done with it. The foundation and the powder will also hold the lipstick and keep it from running off.

When you are done with the foundation and the face powder, gently trace the outline of your lips with a sharp lip liner. Make sure that the lip liner matches the shade of your lipstick. The lip liner will keep the lipstick from bleeding out of the lips.

After this, put your red lipstick on with the use of a lip brush. A lip brush will ensure that you have just the right amount of lipstick on your lips. Work your way from the middle of your lips to the corners. And then, kiss a piece of tissue to take away the excess lipstick and then finish off by dabbing a small amount of face powder on your lips.

Red lipstick makes the face, not just the lips, very attractive. So, you have to make sure that your makeup is balanced whenever you have red lipstick on. If you have red lipstick on your lips, just apply a light shade of eye shadow on your eyes to keep the focal point of your makeup on your lips. If your eye shadow is not light enough, you will end up looking like a clown with your makeup. Better yet, do away with the eye shadow completely and just dab on mascara for some subtle drama.

You do not have to be afraid to wear a bright shade of red lipstick on your lips. Just apply it correctly and make sure that you balance your makeup when you paint your lips red.