TSA finds blade disguised as lipstick in traveler’s carry-on bag: ‘Blood red?’

NEW YORK CITY (WPIX) — A Transportation Safety Administration officer at LaGuardia Airport in New York City recently discovered a new meaning to the phrase “beauty is pain.”

Officials with the TSA said Thursday that a traveler at LaGuardia was recently stopped at a security checkpoint after an officer found a tube of lipstick that was not lipstick at all, but a knife.

“Instead of lipstick in the tube, a twist of the handle reveals a razor-sharp blade,” said Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for the TSA, on Twitter.

“If it was lipstick, the color would be what, blood red?” she joked.

Farbstein told Nexstar that the traveler ultimately surrendered the item to the TSA after being given the choice of checking it, handing it off to a non-traveling companion, or placing it back in their vehicle.

Certain sharp objects, such as knives or boxcutters, are prohibited from carry-on bags. This traveler’s lipstick-style knife, Farbstein said, is among such prohibited items, but not illegal to possess or bring in checked baggage.

Another recent traveler wasn’t so lucky, having been arrested in June for attempting to bring a gun disguised as a belt buckle through a checkpoint at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey. The man, who had the item in his carry-on, had told TSA officers he forgot the gun was in his bag. The TSA’s federal security director for New Jersey later called the man’s actions “inexcusable.”