National Lipstick Day!

It’s National Lipstick Day! There are over 1500 “national days” but this is a special day to crossdressers. Who doesn’t love having fabulous looking lips?

How did we get a National Lipstick Day? As of 2016, beauty blogger, entrepreneur and International Businesswoman, Huda Kattan was named the modern-day founder of National Lipstick Day by a Proclamation from National Day Calendar’s Registrar. So it seems all you need to have a National Day of anything is to declare it and get it on the calendar.

But, back to lipstick, that glorious lip enhancer that makes great lips look better and shoddy lips look good. Humans have always looked for way to up their desirability and using cosmetics started early in our history. Ancient Sumerian men and women used crushed up gem stones to decorate their lips and faces. That was over 5000 years ago and it’s the same concept as modern drag queens using glitter and tiny faux gems to create a look.

Ancient Egyptians crushed up bugs and used the bug juice to color their lips. They also wore lipstick to show social status rather than gender.

Not all Egyptian cosmetic experiments were successful. At one point the Egyptians extracted red dye from fucus-algin, 0.01% iodine, and some bromine mannite, but this dye resulted in serious illness.

Minoan women colored their lip bright red. In Greece the first use of lipstick was confined to prostitutes and courtesans. Around  700 BCE upper class Greek women began to engage in the practice of coloring their lips.

The Chinese over 1000 years ago invented lip balm to protect their delicate lips. Then they added scented oils for added enticement.

In the United States carmine dye made from crushed up cochineal insects came into fashion in the 19th century. It didn’t come in a tube, which is where lipstick gets its name. It’s a “lip stick,” but was applied with a small brush much like today’s lip brushes. It wasn’t considered proper for a lady to have scarlet colored lips while out and about so the practice was left mainly to actors and actresses on stage and to regular women in the privacy of their homes. It wasn’t until late in the 19th century that the famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt, began wearing lipstick and rouge in public.

In the early 1890s, carmine was mixed with an oil and wax base. The mixture gave a more natural look and it became more acceptable among women. By 1912 fashionable American women were all using lip color, though they were advised to be careful in application.

Maurice Levy. is the inventor who put lip color in a metal cylinder in 1915 and created lipstick as we know it today. It still wasn’t until 1923 that the first swivel-up tube was patented by James Bruce Mason Jr. in Nashville, Tennessee.

Clara Bow

By that time women had been putting on lipstick for photographs and it gained more in popularity. Actresses on film created lipstick trends such as Clara Bow’s “Cupid’s bow” lips. Later Mariylin Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor contributed to the popularity of dark red lips.

There’s much more to the importance of lipstick in our modern world but we don’t have time to document it all. One important thing to be aware of; Many makeup lines are giving away free lipstick today. When you finish reading our New Content on TGF you may want to freshen your lipstick and head out to the mall to claim your freebie.

MAC Cosmetics is giving away free full-size lipstick with any $25 purchase on July 29. Other stores and brands giving away free lipstick or offering great deals include Urban Decay, Huda Beauty, Anastasia Beverley Hills, ColourPop, Target and Macy’s.

For more information on the history of lipstick visit Wikipedia.

Tags: crossdressing, featured, makeup, Transgender

Category: History