Woman Trying Dozens of Lipsticks at Sephora Carefully Sanitizes First Two

On a recent trip to Sephora, 31-year-old Barbara Wickham knew she’d have to try on dozens of coral lipsticks to find the perfect shade.

“When I saw those cotton balls and squirt-bottles of rubbing alcohol, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll definitely use that on each tester,’” she recalls on her lunch break at Panera on 7th Avenue.

Wickham carefully sanitizes the first two lipsticks she sampled. “But then,” she says, “I got lazy.”

Noting that using a cotton ball to sanitize a tube of lipstick is “actually a lot harder and messier than it looks,” Wickham gave up after trying on Urban Decay’s Fuck Me Coral and Sex in the Bathroom Pink.

“When I moved on to MAKE UP FOR EVER’s I Have a Vagina Mauve, I put the lipstick onto a q-tip, and then used the q-tip to put it on my lips,” she explains. “But then I realized, if not everyone else was doing that, I was still gonna get the germs.”

By the time she reached Smashbox’s JFK’s Blood on Jackie O’s Chanel Suit, Wickham was looking around to make sure no one was watching before applying the tester directly to her lips.

“After a while, I didn’t even care if someone saw me do it,” she says, shaking her head.

Wickham says, so far, she hasn’t suffered any real consequences from her carelessness. “But I can feel a cold sore coming on,” she declares.

Wickham ended up purchasing Too Faced’s Sure, I‘m Comfortable With That Matte.