Pucker Up: Our Love Affair with Lipstick

If you've ever worked in a winery and loaded a few racks of dirty wine glasses into the dishwasher, you'll understand what I mean about a love-hate relationship with lipstick stains. Sometimes, after you pull the steamy rack out of the dishwasher, receive your complimentary facial from the steam, and unload the glasses out of the dishwasher, you discover a few wine glasses that need an extra wash and elbow grease to remove the stubborn lipstick stains. In your mind, you want to figuratively pour the perp a glass from the spit bucket due to the red-stained lip impression - yet at the same time, you want to ask,

"Dang, girlfriend, what brand of lipstick are you using? I am impressed with the staying power. By the way, what shade is it? I love the color."

Since the shade is named "Paris" from the CoCo Rouge Collection, it was only appropriate for me to wear it to and around Paris. 

Lipstick has a long history, especially in the shade of red. The first lip color was created around 3500 BCE  during the Mesopotamian civilization (now known as Iraq). It was made from white lead and crushed red gemstones. Eventually, lipstick reached Egypt. 

Cleopatra also wore red lipstick created with flowers, fish scales, crushed red beetles, and beeswax. Red ochre, a natural iron oxide pigment found in rocks and soil, was also used. Yes, both genders, especially royalty, indulged daily in this luxury item and took cockleshells full of lipstick to their tombs. Ancient Greece wasn't nearly as enamored with lip paint as it was mainly worn by sex workers and punishable for "artificial beauty." Red was the favorite color among the working girls and was made with dyes, wine, sheep sweat, human saliva, and crocodile excrement. Ick. 

Of course, leave it to the Romans, who made lip color chic again for both genders. Men wore red lipstick as a sign of power, and women wore it as an expression of fashion. Enter the Middle Ages in England, where it was said that women who wore lipstick entered into a pact with the devil - and this attitude in England continued into the 1700s. Any married woman who altered her appearance with lipstick, wigs, and even high-heeled shoes could be grounds for an annulment or tried for witchcraft. This law may also have saved more lives than it destroyed lives, as vermillion, the pigment used in lipstick, was made with mercury. 

Things started lightening up in England's Victorian era, although makeup was considered improper in public. However, in the privacy of their homes, women were biting their lips, rubbing red fabric on them, and some secretly traded their homespun lipstick recipes. The wealthy traveled across the channel to the House of Guerlain in Paris to buy a lip pomade made with grapefruit, butter, and wax.

Speaking of Guerlain, Parisian Maison Guerlain, a perfumery, created the first commercial lipstick in 1870. One afternoon, an employee of Guerlain was strolling the Parisian streets when he happened upon a candlemaker shop whose colored candle sticks gave the employee a eureka moment. He envisioned a colored waxy lip cosmetic in the form of a stick. 

Laura Geller's "Witty" is a great lipstick for every day.
Yes, I've worn it grocery shopping - and always with my sunglasses. 

America had a different journey with lipstick. It entered the scene when the Sears and Roebuck catalog first offered rouge for lips and cheeks by the late 1890s. Only silent movie actors and actresses could get away with wearing lipstick during this time. It eventually became a political tool, as suffragettes used lipstick as an emblem of women’s emancipation in the twentieth century. The Flappers, a subculture of young women in the 1920s known for their rebellious behavior and fashionable style, also embraced the red lip. The government entered the scene in 1938 by passing the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, which implemented safety standards and ingredients to guarantee that our lipsticks would contain no sheep sweat, human saliva, or crocodile excrement. Ick. 

In 1941, red lipstick became required for women entering the U.S. Marines. Elizabeth Arden Cosmetics created Montezuma Red, a bright red that matched the piping on their uniforms. The same year, Arden came out with Victory Red for unlisted women to show their patriotism. And here we are in the 21st Century; we have every shade of lipstick color and price - for everyone. 

Being a creature of lipstick habit, when I am hanging around the house either writing or doing chores, it's silly to wear lipstick, but lip balm is the next best thing.
Caudalie Lip Conditioner is made with grape seed oil and shea butter. 

My personal journey with lipstick? Yes. As "new" teenagers of the 1960s, we wore pale pink or white lipstick, shades made popular by The Ronettes (Ronnie Spector), Twiggy, and Cher. After a decade of "bombshells" like iconic Marilyn Monroe, who wore five coats of Guerlain's Rouge Diabolique lipstick on her provocative signature lips, parents could get behind these pale limited colors for our first tube of lipstick.

For most of my adult years, my rule was never to leave the house without makeup, especially lipstick. However, during COVID, my rule got shoved to the side considering the facemasks, but as a substitute, I had a variety of facemasks to match moods, seasons, and holidays. Now that I have permanently retired, I have been more flexible - and I have returned to an old trick I used on a day off - when I don't want to wear a full face of makeup yet need to be out and about, a pair of sunglasses and at least a coat of lipstick does wonder for an attitude.  

Wearing Laura Geller's "Witty." 

(Darn. I missed National Lipstick Day, July 29th, by over a week)