THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

http://www.alaskaair.com/as/www2/flights/Irregular-Operations.asp

I have to go shop for lipstick.  You see I'm normally a Loreal High Gloss Glam Shine lip gloss "Princess" (yeah yeah Vlad and Chris are gonna rag on me big time that my lipgloss is named that) but I need to travel on Monday and can't fly with a liquid in my carry on.  And I'm a high maintenance female that even wears lipgloss while camping.

Apparently because I use lip gloss I must have airline terrorist written all over me.

While I totally understand the level of paranoia that the Airline Industry has going these days, are we truly doing a good job or risk management here?  I guess I can understand that one can smuggle in an amount of chemical to take down a plane in a bottle of lip gloss, but if you read some reports, even lipstick is prohibited.  Reading the official list, things like Carmex or Blistex must go in checked luggage, so I infer from that my Dr. Hauschka's lip balm would most likely be banned as well.

But aren't we getting ridiculous when we're looking at the fact of whether I bring a Lip Balm on the plane or a Smashbox "Brandy on Ice"?

But is this the right way to assess risk?  When you have a firm, you look at the risks and protect accordingly.  Those folks that do things that are riskier are afforded more protection, more mitigations.  Those folks that are pretty boring, you can probably not assign as much resources to. 

So does the fact that I choose to wear Glam Shine mean that I'm a higher risk passenger?  Or should some other risk categorization be assigned based on some other possibly more rational risk factors?

Now honestly the only reason that I do wear Loreal Glam Shine "Princess" in the first place is that the lipstick I used to wear got discontinued.  And there is nothing worse for us high maintenance gals to have the 'perfect' color of lipstick discontinued.  It means that you have to spend hours in the makeup counter finding the perfect lipstick, gloss whatever that is the right texture, color, etc.

Thus, I can totally relate to the women that refused to fly if they had to throw away their lipstick/lip gloss.  After you've spent eons finding the right one, you don't part with it lightly.

The risk of being caught without my lipgloss... well ... that's just WAY too risky of a position to be in....

I'll bet Susanne could relate....