Cult & Run

by Kelly MacPherson

And so I headed for Sephora. The beauty conglomerate, founded in 1969 in Limoges, France had been named for Zipporah, one of Moses’ wives in the Hebrew Bible. I wasn’t in love with the fact that Moses had several wives, some of whom had been given to him by their fathers, but I’d done enough cultic studies on the Old Testament to understand that systems of female oppression are sometimes tinted in Easter pastels. Zipporah, an Ethiopian Midianite known for her good looks, inspired the name of the beauty chain to which I was headed. She meant something different to me, though. Zipporah had been forced to slice off her son’s foreskin and wipe it on her husband’s feet after an angel of God pulled an attempted murder on Moses. Pissed off that her mate should’ve been the one to perform the rite of circumcision but had probably been too busy collecting wives with daddy issues, Zipporah and Moses’ relationship tanked after the incident. Zip and her two sons returned to her father’s land, while Moses went on to part the Red Sea. It’s funny, not ha-ha but ironic, that Moses wouldn’t have freed a people and risen to biblical fame if his wife hadn’t saved his behind in the first place. I didn’t buy my makeup from Sephora because Zipporah was its namesake, but it didn’t dissuade me.