13 Tinted Lip Balms That Will Convince You To Ditch Lipstick

There comes a time in everyone's life when they realize — slowly at first, then suddenly, and all at once — that the things their younger selves once thought of as weird and lame might actually have been cool all along. Reba McEntire, whose albums your mom would sing along to when she was white-wine drunk? Cool. Tucking your shirt into a pair of high-waisted jeans? Cool. Shag haircuts? Cool. Staying in on a Saturday night with no one but the TV and your dog to keep you company? There is literally nothing cooler.

Also extremely cool, highly underrated, and often written off as boring or, worse, basic: tinted lip balm. No longer the province of people who just don't have the balls to wear real lipstick and make a real statement, tinted lip balm is experiencing a renaissance. It's a "clean beauty" must-have.

In fact, one might even see the trend — with best-selling brands like Pat McGrath, Tower28, and Kosas getting in on it — as the backlash to the popularity of the impenetrable matte liquid lip, which has been a long time coming. Tinted lip balm is here to remind us that effortlessness is also cool, and that a razor-sharp liner and a pointed concealer brush are not prerequisites for wearing lip color. So queue up "You Lie" and get swiping...no mirror necessary.