Read My Lips: A Cultural History of Lipstick

Would that one dime-store cosmetic really did have all the powers breathily attributed to it by this darling but unforgivably frivolous little volume: ''Lipstick has changed lives...broken up marriages...shattered illusions.'' Excuse us, but is this a cultural history, as the (very attractive) cover alleges, or have we been dragged perforce into a Maybelline ad? The current stuff certainly beats the salves of yore — brandy, seaweed, and crushed insect bodies, according to the authors — but if it really ''prepares [women] to compete in a man's world,'' feminism is in even sorrier shape than our wizened stub of Bobbi Brown Nude. Read My Lips: A Cultural History of Lipstick is glossy and disappointing. B