R is for red lipstick, rebellion, and resistance

A symbol of female rebellion and resilience, because resistance never goes out of style

It’s Wednesday, but it feels like it should be Friday. The dogs are begging for the grapes I’m eating - which they wouldn’t like if I gave them some, which I can’t because they are very bad for dogs. I’m staring at the snow covering everything within sight of my front windows and wishing it would cloud over. This sunshine is baloney. Clouds keep the heat in the atmosphere. This sunshine is freezing my nose hairs together.

The last week and a bit has been a doozy. Shout out to those federal judges holding the line for democracy. I wish I had your salary, but not your job. I’ve been enjoying the fortifying strength of all the ways, big and small, that people have been resisting ideologies that hurt others: We see you, principal and teachers in Chicago who refused to let ICE into their school; thanks for buying hard copies of banned books, lady whose reel I saw before school drop off. Big and small, that’s how we have to do it. Big and small and one step at a time.

I tried to find a photo of me wearing lipstick, but they truly are few and far between. Sorry! So here I am with Clover when she was a puppy.

Rebellion always has me thinking about makeup, she says, as she sits, barefaced in front of her laptop. Apparently Hitler disliked makeup. An entire propaganda machine whirled into action, encouraging women to wear lipstick, blush, and nail polish. He was allegedly particularly put off by red. Women wore red lipstick in particular during WWII because he was said to hate it.

I did search, but found no primary source evidence that he ever said any of those things, but historians have surmised that because he was a vegetarian and lipsticks then were made with animal fats. Additionally, visitors to Hitler’s country estates were prohibited from wearing red lipstick and painted nails. I did find evidence, that modifications to uniforms were not permitted, and this included makeup, as ‘Aryan’ women were meant to be ‘natural beauties’. A New York Times article from 1933 ran with the headline, “Nazis ban cosmetics: Painted women to be barred from public function.” So, I think it’s mostly safe to say that using makeup to make a statement in this case makes sense.

We do know that in the face of Hitler’s purported hatred of red lipstick, American women wore it en masse. Montezuma red was commissioned from Estee Lauder to perfectly match the piping of women’s uniforms. The military provided a kit to women that included Montezuma red, a red blush, and red nail polish. Civilians wore Victory Red. Ally women from North America and the European continent were sending a patriotic message.

Much of what I could find on makeup in the military during WWII is with respect to White women. Documents do say that lipstick was handed out to all service women, but I don’t think it takes much by way of mental gymnastics to imagine that Black, Indigenous, Asian-American, and Latina women could be left out of this generalized ‘women’.

I scrolled some photos in various articles and I can’t confirm one way or another. There are some in which Black women, in particular are shown wearing lipstick, and again others in which they were not. The same was true for army nurses. A 1942 news release did talk about nurses having the ability to wear makeup and the Red Cross sending them off with makeup as their bon voyage gift, but again, this is all general information and not specific enough for us to know with certainty. Regardless, racial segregation certainly limited the participation of women of colour, in addition to limiting the use of their skills.

It was interesting to see how much literature mentioned the performative element of femininity. That wearing makeup surely allowed women to still feel feminine while working in factories or wearing their uniform. I can see how any element of regular life would be comforting and help a person stay sane in the chaos that is war.

Cindy Baker’s work on bullets and lipstick provide an even deeper intertwining of war and lipstick - The process, machinery, and sometimes even the factories for producing brass casings for lipsticks and bullets is the same. The brass lipstick case was invented by a bullet-maker on the same machinery that made munitions. The term for a molded piece of lipstick is a “bullet”. The term for a lipstick mold is a “bullet mold”. 30 brass lipstick tubes could be recycled into 20 brass bullet casings.

Taking this analogue to the next level, Soviet spies sometimes carried a lipstick pistol - a single shot weapon that looked like lipstick. Apparently one was up for auction in February 2020.

Lipstick, our symbol of rebellion, has been seen both as a self-chosen, emancipatory, and empowering piece of makeup and as part of normative, oppressive beauty practices upholding narrow feminine ideals that exist at the intersection of capitalism and the patriarchy. I know. Can’t we have anything anymore? Now they’ve come for the lipstick! Yes, the beauty industry coopts basically anything it can to market it back to us. And yes, definitions of beauty and who can and can’t wear a product are rife with racism, sexism, and ageism, and in this they are most certainly tools of oppression.

But it is also a tool used by people to challenge gendered norms, political positions, social rules, and to show solidarity. A history of cosmetics exists since the time of the Egyptians and through its long life, women have engaged with makeup in ways that were meaningful to them, whether or not these were in agreement with the larger discourse of makeup in society.

…although a seemingly trivial act, wearing lipstick is a powerful example of how the personal is political (Hurd Clarke and Bundon 2009)

In 2021, Portuguese presidential election candidate, Andre Ventura (Far-right) insulted the left-wing candidate Marisa Matias for her use of red lipstick. The public reacted with #VermelhoEmBelem (#RedInBelem). Gendered insults sometimes backfire like this, generating a strong feminist reaction. People of all genders appeared on social media in red lipstick, tagging themselves as part of the movement. The red lipstick served as a form of visual defiance.

Similar comments have been made about the brilliant AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and her red lipstick. Additionally, she was attacked by conservatives for wearing expensive clothing during a photoshoot for Vanity Fair. I’m not sure if they thought she owned the clothing?

“Lip+hoops were inspired by Sonia Sotomayor, who was advised to wear neutral-colored nail polish to her confirmation hearings to avoid scrutiny. She kept her red. Next time someone tells Bronx girls to take off their hoops, they can just say they’re dressing like a Congresswoman.” AOC, Jan 3, 2019 via Twitter

She opted to show up as herself, refusing to tone down her lip or ignore her heritage by removing her hoops.

I came across a lovely article in The Walrus by Erica Thorkelson about how joy is rebellious and thus, for her, wearing lipstick feel rebellious. The magazine called on readers to tell them how they disrupt the beauty industry. A cool idea. I thought I could take a look to see if there were interesting trends. Alas, the responses are only on instagram and because The Walrus is a journalism mag, I can’t read the responses - no new on socials in Canada. If you’re outside Canada, maybe you can see what people had to say about how they break from neoliberalism+giant beauty industry, how people find joy in their disruptions, how people engage in beauty in a way as defined by them.

At the turn of the 20th century, cosmetics were considered a sign of debauchery. So far makeup is checking all my boxes: Debauchery, rebellion, resistance….Enjoy. And use responsibly.

Nx

If you’re thinking, didn’t you write a post about makeup a bit ago? I did. You can find it: