Lipstick what is the reason that women (the old fashioned type) wear it.

[Karensalright]

Just that really

Women who couldn't get lipstick would wet their finger, rub it over a red fabric book cover and use the dye to colour their lips.

In Holy Catholic Ireland women used to use the red cover of The Messenger as lipstick and blusher when nothing else was available.

I wear make up to make me look more expressive- my features are very fair and washed out. I don’t have heavy brows and lashes. My lips are pale. I’m a bit blank looking with no make up.

With make up, my smiles and frowns are exaggerated. Without it people think I’m ill or tired. If I had more dramatic colouring I probably wouldn’t bother.

@JaneJeffer fascinating post. My Gran was from Southern Ireland and like i said would not be seen dead in public without lippy.

She told me they used to stain their legs with tea bags when stockings could not be sourced.

Tis far from teabags they were reared @Karensalright (unless your granny is very young). Southern is superfluous by the way!

It's my I mean Business face. I don't care what men or women think, it's what I think.

The men in my profession may not wear make up, but they all appear at meetings wearing their Clever Glasses. Which they then all take off because they can't read in them

Also it's tidbits as opposed to tit bits

Nope: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4518550-Is-it-Tidbit-or-titbit

My exes Granny was Irish (Co Mayo), she would have been 106 this year and told me the story of working in “munitions” in WW2 after she moved to the UK as a girl (no she wasn’t in the family way!) and how they’d use tea bags or gravy browning on their legs and draw a seam with a kohl pencil (one shared with all the factory girls!). It would rain and their legs would “run”.

Then there were the “tarts who’d drop their drawers for a packet of nylons from the GIs”, said in a disapproving tone whilst peering over the top of that month’s copy of The Messenger!

She’d only ever wear lipstick on special occasions…always “Tea Rose” by Max Factor. Presumably only tarts wore red!

“Southern” Ireland ugh. Gets my back up every time. It’s. Just. IRELAND.

It would probably have been a cloth dipped in cold tea rather than teabags. Everyone used loose tea in those days.

A debate about Ireland? FFS, I suppose i could have said the republic of, or Eire or Eireann, the Galic version.

Gran was from County Kerry, ergo a southern county of Ireland that was/is very rural, Port Arlington to be precise.

Correct about tea bags, i think she used to make a bag with tea leaves in it.

Or, alternatively, you could have just said Ireland (or if you were so desperate for us to know exact location “the South of Ireland” or even just “Kerry”) rather than use a term which knowingly offends most Irish people due to it’s connotations.

@All2Well what??? I hold an irish passport you are talking utter rubbish

”holding an Irish passport” (as loads of people with an Irish grandparent do) doesn’t make it inoffensive or mean I’m talking utter rubbish.

It’s been debated endlessly on here, for a start.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1960833-to-wish-people-would-use-the-correct-name-for-my-country#:~:text=The%20term%20%27Southern%20Ireland%27%20is,recognising%20the%20independence%20of%20Ireland.

Your question is terribly phrases.

If you had just asked why you think women wear make up and the feminist issues surrounding it, you'd have probably got a better response.

It is an interesting issue for sure.

@mathanxiety oh it's possible. But there's no evidence for it. The oldest cave paintings (which are the earliest known use of pigment) are 65,000 years old. That's basically yesterday. The earliest bipedal hominids were 4.5M years ago. Our direct ancestor H. erectus was around 2M years ago. I'm pretty sure that any link between quadrupedalism and display of sexual organs would have been forgotten about by the time pigments came along.

Like a lot of things it is cyclical, and certainly in the past wasn't just women.

If any one remembers or has seen photos from the 60s / 70s, young "trendy" women didn't wear lipstick unless to make lips the same colour as their skin.

I dont think there was ever any suggestion that red lips were meant to represent other parts of the anotomy, because in the past men wore lipstick / rouge, nearly always an indication of class, wealth.

Currently despite those who think they are up with fashions, on a whole in the west we have got stuck in male and female clothing based on a pattern established by the Victorians, and re-entrenched in the 1950s. Prior to that men were often the peakcocks of fashion, not women.

There's probably a better article than this one but this gives a history of lipstick. https://daily.jstor.org/lipsticks-complex-history/

Portarlington (originally Cúil an tSúdaire) is about an hour away from Dublin on the Laois/Offaly border. Not Kerry, and not the south.
Portarlington is an interesting place, big French Huguenot influence, known as 'The Paris of the Midlands'...... Presumably by someone who had never been to Paris ☺

My granny also used the cover of the Messenger magazine as rouge if she was going dancing. She always told us that wearing lipstick habitually was bad as it caused the natural colour of the lips to fade. I never wore lipstick. Sorry, but I don't have a timeline of lip colour to prove or disprove Gran's theory...

Or just Ireland maybe 🤔

I don't look like a doll with make up. I have no make up days and make up days.

Some women like make up. Some don't.

Isn't feminism about choices? Not random people insulting your life choices?

I remember years ago an experiment being done and it was to do with change left in a phone box - people were more honest and more likely to return the change to women wearing make-up.

Was it just wearing or not wearing make-up that was the difference? Or were the women in make-up also more smartly dressed?

I don't wear make-up but I have noticed sometimes people treating me differently when I am smartly dressed from when I'm looking a bit scruffy. Is it really about what's on someone's face or an overall impression?

it could well make the difference between being offered a job or not, all other things being equal.

This is definitely a feminist issue. Why are women still being judged on whether or not they like to paint their faces rather than on whether they can do the job? If it's about being smart, they should use the same criteria as they do for men.

Actually men wore make-up, wigs, perfume and high heels in the 17th and 18th century. They were beautiful peacocks.It was dreary Beau Brummel who chucked it all and just wore plain black and it's been like that except for the delicious 1960s, 70s...

@Karensalright I'm a lesbian and love makeup, jewelry, perfume, and pretty clothes.

I was talking about now thatsthewayitis. What was happening 300-400 years ago isn't really relevant to how people live now.

Yes it is relevant as only very recently Beau Brummel radically changed male beauty standards. The 1960s and 70s tried to bring it back. David Bowie and actors of that era could look wonderful in makeup and beautiful clothes.
I think some kind of latent Victorian societal puritanism is preventing men from adorning themselves again, which is a pity.

Don't forget the 80's! The New Romantics loved their makeup.

That is what I was trying to say.

In many ways in Europe since what in the UK was called the Regency period (obviously only for those with money and time) men were as likely to be brightly dressed and used make up.

But from the Victorian period onwards the "male" dress of sober suits and women dressing demurely took hold. (Even when i was growing up women who wore red / scarlet dresses were frowned on.)

And in the fifties this rigid pattern of dress between men and women continue.

That's why the trouser suit (yuk) was seen as revolutionary! The problem was that while women started to challenge the boundaries very few men did.

Although the era of the "gender benders" which was specifically not about anyone saying they were changing their sex but were able as their sex to wear clothing traditionally assumed to be "natural" to the opposite sex.

And later the punks and goths treating make up more as a message than some sort of embelishment.

Then the backlash of the 80s etc., set in and women's styles (mainly created by men) became hypersexualised.

Nearly all of this is social conditioning ie what ads and magazines have made us think is a good look.

But as anyone knows who looks at old photos of oneself more often than not you cant help but laugh - or blush.