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Do you remember your first lipstick? I still have the Max Factor Paint Box I bought with babysitting money when I was 13 years old. Of course it is far too old to use, but I can't quite bring myself to throw away that landmark purchase.
For many girls, permission to wear lipstick is a rite of passage signifying the end of girlhood and the beginning of their lives as women.
Social psychologists have a lot to say about lipstick. Some have described lipstick as the equivalent of the power tie for men. Many wearers reveal that it is the product that they use to define or distinguish their private from their public self. Usually the final step in the makeup process, it is the last thing one does before moving from the realm of home and one's private life into one's public world. Wearing it seems to imply a woman means business.
And that splash of colour certainly makes us feel better, more confident. The medical community calls it the Lipstick Theory and uses it to explain the point at which seriously ill women seem to have turned the corner and are on their way to recovery. When patients begin to take notice of their appearance, perhaps by applying lipstick, it appears to signal their conscious desire to be seen less as a patient and more as a woman.
Lip prints in time
Women have been trying to improve the look of their lips since ancient times. Lipstick has a long and illustrious history.
- Egyptian hieroglyphics depict women holding mirrors in one hand while painting on lip colour with the other.
- Class and social distinction were established in the Middle Ages when women of questionable virtue painted their lips in crimson shades. Rich, red shades of lip colour have a sexual connotation to this day.
- In the 18th century, women who enticed men into marriage by using artifice such as cosmetics, were deemed to be witches.
- The morality that characterized Queen Victoria's reign might have reduced the public use of cosmetic products; however, women who patronized the fashion salons of French designers like Worth, often purchased lip colour.
- The first commercially Produced lipstick was sold in...