I've been meaning to make a forum post on this honestly: how are we meant to differentiate between both? In a lot of cases, I think maybe I've been tagging them incorrectly, so I want to make sure we had like... a discussion on a solid difference between them (and maybe wiki page updates to reflect this).

For example, I've been using these elements to determine it's colored *_lipstick:

• Shiny and has reflection, like lipstick
• Character is applying lipstick
• Is in a grey area as to whether or not it's lips or lipstick BUT the character has other makeup on (this one I'm very iffy about, I'm probably going to revert my edits and fix mistakes I've made with this one. apologies in advance, as I feel I've probably mistagged and will be fixing my error)

And these elements to determine pure colored *_lips:

• Same color as surrounding face
• VERY light color on bottom lip but nothing else
• Lacking upper lip color (this one I'm very iffy about, I'm probably going to revert my edits and fix mistakes I've made with this one. apologies in advance, as I feel I've probably mistagged and will be fixing my error)

So uh... thoughts? How do we define the difference in solid a non-confusing way?

I dunno. I'm not very good at girl-stuff, but... doesn't lipgloss make a shiney reflection too?

Make up is hard when you're talking about animals. A lot of animals have markings like eyeliner ... most domestic cats have lighter markings around their eye that leads to a "catseye/wing" effect in the corner

(fun fact: the light patch is found in a lot of animals and is thought to help reflect light into their eyes to help them see better at night)

It gets even harder when you're talking about furries who might naturally have "the perfect cat eye" as their natural furpattern, or ruby lips, or blue lips or whatever.

I think the claw/nailpolish area already had a mop up around this idea: nail_polish is aliased to colored_nails, and all of the red_nails tags imply colored_nails. --including thinks like black_nails which would happen naturally on a lot of animals.

But again, how the heck do you tell? No one draws their fursona with chipped polish :P

... I'd argue that lips should probably just all be red_lips and blue_lips and there's no concern about if she (or he, or they) were born with it, or if it was maybelline.

UNLESS/HOWEVER

There should be some tags for OBVIOUS lipstick:

On a penis: post #1455581
As a 'lip print' post #1415993
Smeared on someone's mouth -- no picture, no time, sorry. Imagine lots of moisture, or kissing.
In the process of being applied post #1572016
and a tag for the actual object, because it's not ALWAYS being used while in the picture: post #965484

WE have a lot of lip related tags, but there doesn't seem to be a first idea on which ones to use, baring, I think kiss_mark which I THINK had somethign like 900 posts, but was also applied on some pictures that were more "lipstick ring on penis"

This probably doesn't help, sorry <3

No no it's fine! It's a bit of a hard topic to set standards for anyways, especially since fictional creatures can have markings that look like makeup but aren't makeup.

There are obvious cases, as you said, with application and lipstick markings/smeared lipstick on their faces. Lipstick as an object is an obvious use as well, which should also be accompanied with with the object tag (which does exist: lipstick (object))