Sunday, 16 October 2011

Lipstick - a Suffragette's Weapon

In the early C20th, the suffragettes used lipstick as a sign of emancipation. Leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman advocated the wearing of lip rouge (as it was known then) as an emblem of women's emancipation, and incorporated its use into the 1912 New York Suffragette Rally, choosing to sport a specific shade of red. 
http://jennyjenny-yesterdaygirl.blogspot.com/2010/05/deeds-not-words-role-models-in-womens.html
In both the US and in England, women publicly applied lip rouge with the expressed intent of appalling men. 'Lipstick's long proscription by social, religious, and legal male authority made it a ready symbol for female rebellion.'[1]
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[1] Reading Our Lips: The History of Lipstick Regulation in Western Seats of Power. Sarah Schaffer