So, what was I doing at Boots the other day putting yet another new lip plumper into my basket? Was the Angelina craze finally getting to me?

To be honest I am not sure where my absolute obsession with lip plumping glosses comes from. I’m not unhappy with my lips at all and even if I had been some of you might possibly remember that in my last lip plumper review I had actually found a gloss that I really liked and that worked the way it was supposed to.


I’m not sure why I keep buying these things but I think that it has something to do with the lure of being able to fairly drastically change the way I look without surgery. I don’t particularly want Angelina lips but I just want to look different from what I do now, and this seems such an easy way to do it – if it works that is!


In this particular case it was mainly the packaging that managed to seduce me (stop calling me easy!). My local Boots had a whole shelf full with this new, US range Soap and Glory. The packaging is a rather retro pink and grey with black and white 60s-looking pictures and embellished with different slogans. I had a look at what they had to offer simply based on the fact that any of the products would look lovely in my bathroom – all logic me! In fact, it does worry me how all the sense and logic that I seem to be able to apply to the rest of my life (well, my working life at least) simply seems to leave me as soon as I spot something pretty, pink and glittery – am I a three year old child or what?


Anyway, enough about that, I clearly, for very logical reasons, realised that I needed another lovely pink lip plumping gloss as soon as I spotted this. After all, who can resist a gloss called Sexy Mother Pucker? And as if that’s not enough the packaging also states that “lip size [is] crucial for sexual attraction” just to make sure that all poor thin lipped women will feel bad enough that they have to buy this to have any sort of chance of ever attracting another man. At least it is not as expensive as some other plumpers I have come across; at £8 for 15 ml it is in fact rather cheap.


The gloss promises to give skinny lips “more leverage” through its very own superfill plumping technology which “expands to up to 10 times in volume when applied to your lips”. As with every other lip plumper this specific technology is supposedly super secret but as you can find the ingredients on the packaging I guess you could quite easily figure out how it’s done. No matter what the super secret ingredient may be, all lip plumpers work by causing a mild reaction on the lip tissue which gives a temporary swelling. This means that if you have very sensitive skin you may well end up with lips twice there normal size if you happen to have a really bad reaction. The products are not harmful, but for the very sensitive they may well cause too much of a reaction, and if you put it outside the lip line (yep, I’m guilty of that one) you may well get very red and irritated skin around the mouth.


The actual lip plumper tube was a bit of a disappointment considering the fact that I bought it because the packaging was so pretty. The tube is black plastic and has pink writing on it, making it look very cheap and boring sadly.


The instructions are rather simple – “It’s easy. Just put your lips together and glow!”. As instructions go these aren’t the best as I would have at least expected them to mention the fact that you should apply the gloss no matter how obvious that may be.


As I applied it I didn’t feel the familiar tingle that I have gotten used to from other lip plumpers. It felt like a normal, albeit very sticky lip gloss and it had a pretty strong scent of…sweets? Chocolate? Well, something like that anyway. I left it on for quite some time and still could not feel the tiniest tingle or even notice a change in lip colour something which I think all the other lip plumpers I have tried have delivered, even if nothing else. Very disappointed I put it to the side but decided to give it another go the day after and this time the reaction was very different. In spite of the instructions being very simple I’d forgotten the “putting your lips together” part of them. It seems that this gloss works when it comes in contact with water, or even (yuck!) saliva. I haven’t a clue why, or how this works, as the packaging and website don’t offer an explanation for this but boy, did my lips tingle once I’d realised what I had to do!


This lip plumper is not for you if you are rather sensitive to pain as it is really quite uncomfortable for the first 15 – 20 minutes or so. Still, no pain, no gain, right? Well, in this case I think there’s too much pain and very little gain. In spite of the intense tingling sensation there was no noticeable plumping effect. My lips did look rather red and the gloss is pretty nice but very, very sticky. Whereas the stickiness guarantees that it will stay put for longer it also means that I keep getting my hair stuck in it and if there’s something I don’t like it’s lip-glossy hair.


In all, this is certainly not the best plumper I have tried and I wouldn’t really recommend it. Even if you don’t care so much about the plumping effect but want the colour, you can find a better product. I think all the other lip plumpers I’ve tried before have been better than Sexy Mother Pucker (still a great name though…).

Now I must get back to Boots and buy one of the other pretty Soap and Glory products for my bathroom shelf.