Welcome to Makeup Monday, my weekly series on makeup; academic and postacademic job market and productivity posts will continue on Tuesday and Friday as usual.

Here is my weekly reminder:  I will not engage with makeup-shaming here or on any Facebook or Twitter comment threads. I support your right to not wear makeup, and anyone who dislikes makeup, disapproves of makeup, or wants to argue that no academic woman should be judged on the basis of makeup (which nobody is claiming anyway), I suggest you come back for my other posts on other topics.

For previous posts, see the following:

• Yes This Post Is About Long-Wear Lipcolor
• Welcome to Makeup Monday
• Why Makeup Why Now?
• Face Makeup, The Basics
• Face Makeup, Getting Fancy
• All About Eyes
• Brows Get Their Own Post, Because Of Course They Do
• More on Lipsticks and Introducing Shae

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You guyuz, this weekend, I was strolling through Target looking for the full size of a really great Acure exfoliating face scrub that I found there once in travel size and now use constantly.  This is it.  It is so great that it has now replaced the Philip Thomas Roth FirmX Peeling Gel that I have been using for the past couple of years.  It works BETTER and costs about 1/4 as much. I love that!

Anyway, I didn’t find the full size at my Target (but I will be ordering it, and will be looking into other Acure products as they seem to be really beloved by thousands of people out there on the Internet!) but what I DID find as I was strolling the aisles was…  Cover Girl Outlast All-Day Lipcolor.

Now, you know that I stated firmly at the beginning of this series that I don’t do drugstore makeup.  And that’s true.  But… when I saw the Outlast, I was suddenly reminded that when I did the research for my recent post about long-wear lipcolor, one Buzzfeed reviewer testing various brands ranked this CoverGirl product her favorite (although the rest hated it, and preferred Revlon ColorStay Ultimate Suede, which now of course I will try, also because for years I almost exclusively wore the ColorStay line.)

At the time I thought, “no way can a $7 drugstore lipcolor actually compete with all these other brands.”  But there I was, in Target, looking at it, and it was $7, and I remembered that I’m now writing off all makeup purchases on my taxes because I’m NOW A BEAUTY BLOGGER, so I thought, what the heck, and I bought it and tried it.

And, wow.  This stuff works!  Here I am wearing the Natural Blush shade after my mega- mega-sweaty dance class!  It stayed on just about as well as both Beauty Bakerie and Lipsense, my previously mentioned favorites.

I remember the Buzzfeed testers had issues with its smell, but I – who am certainly one of the most smell-reactive humans on the planet – had no issue with that at all.

Like Lipsense it does include a gloss to wear over and reapply throughout the day for durability.  The gloss is NOT very glossy, just a light sheen, so it doesn’t go too far off the matte look that I prefer.  And the color has the heft of real lipcolor; it’s not a stain. I have worn the Natural Blush non-stop since I bought it, and will definitely be trying some more shades because for $7, why not.

The other cool thing about this product is that it features a skin-tone-matched series of bright “Custom” reds!  I haven’t tried those yet, as red isn’t really my thing (I’m definitely a mauve and rose kind of gal) but I’ll try one and report back!

So readers, I’m interrupting my planned schedule of Makeup Monday posts (today I was planning to talk travel options!) to tell you: if you’re still looking for long-wear lipcolor and the options I mentioned earlier are out of your budget (or even if they aren’t), go ahead and try the CoverGirl.   Let me know how it turns out for you!