As long ago as Cleopatra’s time, women and men decorated their lips with paint. The idea of giving the lips a red glow was to make them look sexy, or so the Egyptians thought. The Egyptian Queen was supposed to have been so captivating that men could not stay away from her. Her dalliance with Mark Antony certainly proved that she had something special, but there is no proof that it was her lipstick.
Henna was processed to make red face paints and hair colorants and bright mauve or Ruddy colored lipstick was made from a poisonous plant called ficus, which contains mercury. So, kissing the beautiful Cleopatra may well have been the ‘kiss of death’.
In C17th Britain the priests instilled into the people the idea that decorating the face with paint was a device invented by the devil and was only intended to tempt weak men into wicked things. Lipstick was not allowed, wearing it was considered sinful and any woman who wore it was considered to be a harlot who was only trying to draw men into her wicked ways.
For more than a hundred years face make-up was considered sinful and this was even encompassed in official laws which stated that any woman who used red face paint was solely intent on putting temptation in the way of respectable men and that if a woman managed to get a man to marry her by wearing lipstick, she was put on trial as a witch. The verdict was always ‘guilty’ and many women were executed for wearing red lipstick.
In the 1900’s only actresses and prostitutes wore make-up and no respectable woman wore lipstick. This same attitude lasted for many years until the first US movies were released from 1930 onwards and film stars wearing lipstick and other face make-up suddenly made the whole thing respectable and even desirable. The first hairdressing shops started up and famous cosmetic names like Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein came into being.
Lipsticks at this time were rather like big wax crayons and coloring pigments were mixed with talc and beeswax. Later, lanolin and cocoa butter were added to make it easier to apply the lipstick.
These days almost fifty percent of all the lipstick made in US contains Castor oil which makes the lips shine and dries to a thin skin which remains in place for much longer. Castor oil has a tendency to upset the water balance in the human body and might just send you, or who ever you kiss, to the rest room more often than is usual.
Recently sunscreens have been added to lipsticks and vitamin C , aloe Vera and some amino acids are also included to plump up the lips.
The labels on lipsticks are not something that we usually take much notice of but maybe it’s time we did read them more closely. Just think about it, your lipstick too may deliver the ‘kiss of death’.
