Some people celebrate the 4th of July but here on Stuff Mom Never Told You I celebrate
the 6th of July because it's National Kissing Day. [Kissing sound]. And to celebrate I'm
going to answer the question of why women wear lipstick. Because kissing and lipstick
go together like the 4th of July and fireworks. Hotdogs and buns. Popsicles and brainfreezes.
Like kissing and an increased risk of contracting oral herpes.
To answer the question of why women wear lipstick we must go way, way, way, way, way, way, way,
way, way, way, uh, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way back in time, approximately,
to 3500 BC to ancient Mesopotamia. Which is modern day Middle East. And that's where we
find the first recorded history of women and men wearing lipstick. That's right, when people
first started wearing lipstick it was more of a signifier of social status and wealth.
My red lips should communicate to you that I have a robust 401K. I wish. So in ancient
Mesopotamia royals and aristocrats would wear compounds made out of things like red clay,
henna, seaweed, iodine and this very toxic compound called bromine mannite and some linguists
think that is where the phrase 'kiss of death' originated because these early lipsticks that
we would slather all over our lips were really, really toxic. In fact, it wasn't until the
1930s that more regulation started cracking down on lipsticks to make sure that we weren't
putting things like lead all over our lips. Moving ahead in time and south for a little
bit into northern Africa we come to one of history's most iconic women Cleopatra the
seventh was known for the lipstick that she would wear, sometimes a combination of this
red dye called carmine and crushed up beetles and crushed up ants. Hello Julius Caesar.
Kiss my lips, there are crushed up ant guts all over them. Your voice is the most annoying
I've ever heard. But I will kiss your alluring lips anyway. If we go to ancient Greece we
start to get into the more gendered territory of lipstick because that is the first time
that we start seeing it really associated with female prostitutes. Let's take a giant
leap now from ancient Greece over to the Middle Ages, come along. This is when stuff starts
to get really weird about lipstick and women because by this point in the Middle Ages men
are not wearing lipstick, we have moved also solidly into Europe and the whole status thing
has flip-flopped from it being a high status signifier to a low status female signifier
because of all of the weird moralizing thanks to the capital 'C' Church, it was said and
I quote that women who wear lipstick were the incarnation of Satan. Maybe it's Maybelline.
Now there is one bright spot for lipstick in the mid-16th century with the reign of
Elizabeth the First. As is well know, Elizabeth the First sported that look of very pale skin
and very bold lips. Her secret ingredients were crushed up flowers. Isn't that the sweetest
thing you ever heard? Now there was a superstitious element to Queen Elizabeth's obsession with
lipstick though, it was this holdover from Medieval times which maintained that lipstick
and cosmetics in general could ward off illness and death. And so as she aged and was on her
death bed it was said that Elizabeth would wear up to half an inch of lipstick in the
hopes of keeping the old grim reaper at bay. But even as awesome as Queen Elizabeth was,
her legacy was not powerful enough to cut those ties between the idea of lipstick was
a sign of a very wayward woman. In 1770, Parliament passed a law saying that it was totally okay
to call off a wedding or even annul a marriage that a bride had worn cosmetics before she
became a wife. But there was a bit of a backlash to all of this moralizing against women wearing
lipstick and this would come in the 1890s and early 1900s with the suffrage movement.
Susan B. Anthony and her gender equality loving compatriots would actually wear red lipstick
to suffrage rallies on purpose as a sign of their rebellion against the status quo. Read
my lips: I would like to vote. Seriously, I'm a woman, could I, could I please vote?
And then in 1890 also as a sign that lipstick was entering the consumer culture, Sears and
Roebuck began selling it in it's catalog for the very first time. And then once we get
into the 20th century with say the flapper who was known for wearing dark red rouge when
she would go out drinking bathtub gin at speakeasies and such. Also the rise of movie culture where
younger girls would see these starlets on screen who were wearing lipsticks slowly but
surely lipstick lost it's tawdry reputation and became just a staple that 98% of women
by 1950 would keep in their purse. Sales of lipstick for women are so consistent that
when the economic recession happened in 2008 the sales of lipstick actually went up which
led some economists to refer to it as the lipstick indicator meaning that women were
buying these small luxuries like lipsticks because we couldn't afford to buy larger things
like say a new purse or a pair of shoes or even a dress so the idea is if lipstick sales
are going up, then it might mean that the economy is going down. Plenty of other economists
who say that the lipstick indicator kind of like the hemline index are totally bunk, but
it's really fascinating to think about especially when you consider the fact that these are
21st century economists considering the real world implications of a tube of this which
goes all the way back to 3500 BC. But one question that I have not answered yet is what's
up with the endurance of red as the staple lip color? Now the more PG answer is younger
women's lips tend to rosier so we wear red lipstick to emulate feminine youth and vitality.
The more PG-13 answer that Freudian psychologists would probably agree with is that we make
our lips bright red to subtlety remind men of vaginas. So while I get so excited about
the rebellious act of wearing lipstick then I think about the fact that I'm just painting
a vagina on my face and I'm back at square one. But I hope this answers your questions
about lipstick, viewers, I want to know, do you wear lipstick regularly? Guys do you like
women in lipstick? So happy national kissing day, kiss someone you love. Consensually.