Why  lipstick everywhere I look?

Beauty brands are expanding their lipstick ranges to include lip stains, matte lippies, gloss with colour. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • It is not only lipstick that has an advantage. Things like perfume and nail polish also benefit. It is therefore not a surprise that beauty brands have found their way locally from Black Up, BLK OPL, the exclusive cachet of Lintons Beauty World and Madora who have perfume launches and designers collections, MAC Cosmetics, to local brands like Suzie Beauty and Pauline Cosmetics.
  • You will also notice the growing interest in beauty and skin care sold exclusively on social media platforms and at specific events like hair festivals.

Is it just me or is there lipstick everywhere I look? Instagram pages are about the lippie. YouTube tutorials show us how to wear lipstick and make it last longer. Which is the best shades and brands for different skin tones and how to do variations of the ombre lip. Beauty brands are expanding their lipstick ranges to include lip stains, matte lippies, gloss with colour. Last Saturday was International Lipstick Day. MAC was giving away a tube of lipstick worldwide.

Lip colour selections are so varied it seems they are overtaking the nuances of eye shadows and palettes. Lipsticks are mixed, blended, matched. They become anything in the hands of the user and colours that look like zombie movie makeup come with creative instructions on how to wear them on social media.

Researchers from the Harvard Medical School alongside University of Chieti, Italy, released a study on July 28 this year. Their findings are that female students who wear makeup have higher grades and higher self esteem.

It runs contrary to everything our education system thinks of women who spend time making themselves glamourous. The traditional African mentality is such that the plain woman who does not dawdle in what is considered a narcissistic manner is the good girl on a trajectory to success. Apparently makeup was far more effective than listening to positive music to boost one’s moods during study time.

Cosmetics, it turns out, have a positive effect on, wait for it, cognitive abilities. These are the “core skills your brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention. Working together, they take incoming information and move it into the bank of knowledge you use every day at school, at work, and in life.”

This is what has been referenced as “the lipstick effect” and “the lipstick index” where the effect is what happens during an economic crisis or a recession where women spend more on beauty luxury products as opposed to fashion. And the index is the measuring gauge, “an alternative economic indicator that sees makeup sales rise in a downturn,” says The Guardian. It was a theory conceived by an Estee Lauder executive. 

It is not only lipstick that has an advantage. Things like perfume and nail polish also benefit. It is therefore not a surprise that beauty brands have found their way locally from Black Up, BLK OPL, the exclusive cachet of Lintons Beauty World and Madora who have perfume launches and designers collections, MAC Cosmetics, to local brands like Suzie Beauty and Pauline Cosmetics. You will also notice the growing interest in beauty and skin care sold exclusively on social media platforms and at specific events like hair festivals.

Here is what is best described as a sexist theory. First, keep in mind that in 2012 the “Lipstick Effect” was disputed as too generalised and not relevant to all women. Fair enough. But, Psychology Today said this experiment was so subtle it needed focused deep study.

Their perspective is during an economic recession women want to make themselves attractive to men. Because in a recession financially stable men are scarcer, and women are driven by the urge to reproduce with someone who can take care of them and their young ones.

 In order to attract this kind of mate, they have to up the ante, ergo, lipstick. Men, now you know why you seem to abruptly find yourselves besieged by contouring, falsies, precisely applied lipstick and highlighting. Perhaps it is time you grasped that mating lies behind the science and the rise of makeup.

Higher unemployment (we are about to hit 40 per cent) means limited resources with unmarried women spending more of their income on grooming products.

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology discloses when “men read a news article about a recent economic recession, they developed less desire to purchase consumer products in general.

“When women read the same magazine article on a recession, in comparison with reading an article on modern architecture, unlike men, their desire to purchase products that could enhance appearance, including lipstick, increased.”

So there it is ladies. Gentlemen, now you understand why so many female hours are spent making sure #eyebrowsonfleek!