It’s our patriotic duty to wear lipstick during a Zoom call

Of the many news stories that have left me open-mouthed in horror since 23 March, the reports that over-zealous police officers were threatening to check people’s lockdown shopping trolleys for “non-essential items” were definitely the most gob-smacking. “What counts as non-essential items?” a nation worried and wondered. If you were in the toiletries aisle of Sainsbury’s, for example, could you buy soap but not shower gel? Shampoo but not conditioner? Where did the law stand on cotton wool pads? After all you could just scrub your mascara off with a dampened piece of rough toilet paper, as we used to when caught wearing make-up at school. If you had toilet paper, of course.

And what about make-up? Most supermarkets carry some. Would the police be fining anyone who snuck a concealer stick in with the margarine? Would the magistrates’ courts be full of people who bought mascara with their own-brand beans?

During the Second World War, a great many things were rationed to a degree that make our recent complaints about not being able to get the right kind of flour for focaccia seem very spoilt indeed. But one thing that the wartime government in Britain did not ration was lipstick. Wearing make-up was believed to be a valuable morale booster. At a time when everyone was expected to do their bit, it was even thought to be patriotic. Hitler’s Nazis liked their women well-scrubbed and free of artifice, so a slick of bright lipstick became a good way of sticking two fingers up at the pink-cheeked Aryan ideal.

Advertisements of the time, such as that for Ivory soap, told consumers: “Beauty is your duty”. A campaign for Tangee lipstick said: “No lipstick will win the war. But it symbolises one of the reasons why we are fighting—the precious right of women to be feminine and lovely under any circumstances.”

Meanwhile, a wartime editorial in Vogue exhorted: “To be as attractive as we can is almost a civic duty; there are so many sad and ugly things in the world that I think women should say to themselves humbly, not with vanity ‘I will try to be as pretty as I can, so that when people look at me, they will feel refreshed. I will make an effort to be easy on the eye.’” The message was so compelling that when supplies of lipstick ran low, as essential ingredients became harder to source and many cosmetic factories turned to manufacturing medicines, patriotic beauty fans kept up appearances with beetroot juice.

Of course, in the 1940s no one was issuing the average squaddie with a tube of Maybelline but lipstick wasn’t always perceived as the expression of ultimate femininity. More than 5,000 years ago, Ancient Sumerian women and men used crushed gemstones and powdered rock to decorate their mouths. But it was perhaps the Egyptians who invented the classic red lippy, tinting their lips with ochre and carmine mixed with wax or fat.

What’s carmine? Well, it’s mashed-up bugs. Carmine is extracted from the cochineal bug, a small sessile (immobile) parasite resembling a jellified red wood louse that lives on cacti. Appetising, huh? The Egyptians also invented suffering to be beautiful, it would seem. Especially if you’re a small red bug.

Since the Egyptians, people – though mostly women – have put all sorts of horrors on their faces in the pursuit of beauty. Elizabeth I thought her make-up had the power to ward off death and disease. Given that the lipstick by which she set so much store often contained Venetian ceruse, a form of white lead, poor Elizabeth was sadly mistaken.

More than three centuries later, lipstick became an important economic indicator. Sales of the stuff remained buoyant even during the Great Depression, leading economists to coin the phrase “Lipstick Effect”, to describe how we turn to small inexpensive treats to boost our moods in times of trouble.

That mood-boosting effect is measurable. In 2016, researchers from Italy’s University of Chieti joined a team from the Harvard Medical School to study how wearing make-up affected the performance of 186 female students on various cognitive tests. Their results were published in Cogent magazine under the headline “Does make-up make you feel smarter? The ‘Lipstick Effect’ extended to academic achievement.”

Before they undertook the tests, the students were split into three groups. One group listened to uplifting music, another group coloured in a sketch of a human face. The third group were asked to put on some make-up.

When the test results came in, the researchers found that the group wearing make-up outperformed the others. The researchers suggested: “One explanation for this effect lays in the fact that make-up may function as a physical self-esteem booster…” Higher levels of self-esteem have previously been linked with higher levels of academic accomplishment. The report continues: “A complementary hypothesis suggests that make-up may also influence cognitive performance via positive emotions. That is, make-up may function as a positive mood induction technique that, in turn, leads to better performance.

I’ve not been, thus far, an avid wearer of make-up. I was put off lipstick in a big way when I read that the average lipstick fan can expect to swallow 12 tubes of the stuff in their lifetime, through licking their lips and also through getting lipstick on whatever it is they’re supposed to be eating. The ingredient list on the average tube of lip colour really didn’t appeal (Cochineal is still used in the cosmetics industry, FYI. According to the Peta website, you’ll find it listed as “natural Red 4”).

All the same, I have always envied friends who have a signature make-up style. When I think of red lipstick, my friend Jenny Colgan, bestselling author of The Bookshop On The Shore, springs to mind.

When I asked her if she was still wearing her trademark lipstick in lockdown, she responded immediately: “I wear it every day, I don’t know what I look like without it. I recommend Maybelline lip ink as it is unshiftable. But also people still have to look at me, I am not dagging out completely. Zooming towards 50 is grim enough without giving up.”

Talking of Zooming… The lockdown has changed many things in all our lives but most significantly for me it has put an end to my habit of hanging out in my pyjamas all day. Though none of us are going anywhere, I have never felt more visible now that I’ve finally had to give in to the horror of the video call. And we all know that looking half-good on camera – even your laptop’s camera – requires much more effort than looking good in real life and that means make-up.

This Friday, 8 May, marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the Victory in Europe that hastened the eventual end of the Second World War. I’ll be zooming some friends for a celebratory sherry in the evening and in honour of the brave women who kept up appearances throughout the war, I will make an effort to “be easy on the eye”.

I’ll have to actually buy a lipstick first though. If I’m stopped on my way out of the shop, I’ll have my excuses ready. “Officer, it’s for the support of my cognitive abilities and the ‘refreshment’ of anyone who has to look at me.”