If it had not been that shade of red then I may have been able to avoid what happened, but many will say that I brought it on myself. I did go on about the standard of presentation of my all-female staff. It was simply because I appreciate feminine beauty and hate seeing a woman dress down for the sake of political correctness. Over time those extra little things that make a woman appear truly attractive have been evolved. Lipstick is just one of those things.

Kaylee was one of those young women who called me sexist. She was not unattractive, but stridency makes a woman ugly – don’t you think?

“Do you know what the purpose of lipstick is?” she railed at me. “Red lips mimic red vaginal lips – blood infused labia as pointers that a mammal is ready to receive sex from the male of the species. It is a sexual invitation painted on the face of a woman. It is obscene!”

I never knew that, if it is true? It was just her vehemence that made me laugh in her face. If she was mad before then that drove her completely over the edge. Still, I would have never expected her to do what she did to me.

I am not even sure how it happened. It may have happened at my home, which is where I found myself. Or perhaps it was on the way home – somebody in the back seat of my car? There were drugs involved – it must be. A syringe to the neck perhaps, and then time to lay me out and do what they did.

I woke up and noticed that my hair was longer, and it was blonde. Extensions of some kind which could be pulled or cut out – that would be easy to deal with. But then I looked in the mirror and saw my lips. It seemed that they were not my lips at all – they were pouty and bright red. I thought I could simply wipe the color away, but I couldn’t, even using detergents and solvents. Whatever had been used it was indelible. On my upper eyelid too, indeible black like a tattoo that could not be shifted, made my naturally blue eyes stand out.

It seemed as if something had been done to the skin on my face too. It was not just smooth but totally hairless, as if every hair had been pulled from it. Even women and babies have a light fuzz but I had nothing. I had a face like a Barbie doll. Then I saw that my legs had received the same treatment.

What would you do? I had to confront whoever had done this to me, and if that wasn’t Kaylee it would be somebody else at her instigation, or it might be any one or more of a number of other women who disliked me. They needed to be confronted. But they were all at the office and that was where I needed to go.

I suppose that I could have just turned up dressed as a man. It was as easy as going to the barber shop and getting these blonde locks shorn off and turning up with those lips and those eyes, indelibly feminized. Everybody would laugh at me, and quietly snigger for as long as I continued to look like a freak while I sought a remedy or waited for the colors to fade and whiskers to slowly return.

Or, there was an alternative. It was one they would not expect, but as I thought about it, it was becoming more and more attractive. I could show them the standard of feminine appearance that I had been talking about. As I looked at myself, I decided that I would look fairly attractive as a woman. I could walk into the office loud and proud and give them all something to think about.

Instead of going to the men’s hairdresser I went to a salon to have my hair and makeup done – just no need for lipstick and eyeliner. And then to a few shops to get some shapewear to the right outfit to wear over it, and the kind of shoes that a fashionable professional woman should wear.

I simply walked in with my head held high. Kaylee was dumbstruck. I was sure that it was her, or she had a hand in it, but nobody said anything. Nobody except Malcolm, my immediate superior who asked me what name I would be using from now on and whether I might be free for dinner. There is a man who knows style when he sees it.

There is going to be no fading of these colors and no beard returning, not anytime soon. It’s indelible, you see. I just need to work on other permanent solutions to make the best of it. One thing a woman learns, especially a woman like me, is that style never fades.