{"id":13345,"date":"2015-02-06T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T14:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=13345"},"modified":"2015-02-03T19:17:41","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T00:17:41","slug":"the-kiss-ablilty-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/02\/06\/the-kiss-ablilty-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"That Weird Thing About Lipstick"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have always found it bizarre that lipstick is supposed to make a woman’s lips more irresistible, yet kissing a woman with lipstick gets sticky red or pink smudge all over both faces. So women dress up and look all gorgeous and then their dates can’t <\/em>kiss them. Or, it’s the end of the night and a woman\u00a0wants her date to kiss her, does she put on lipstick or go for the chapstick?\u00a0 Gah, being a woman is hard. And I supposed it can’t be that easy being the person who wants to kiss her in that situation either.<\/p>\n

It’s odd to me that this kiss-ability paradox is never addressed in lipstick advertising.\u00a0 So I was intrigued to see it in this vintage ad<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"2b3b0750\"<\/p>\n

Text:<\/p>\n

Now water cannot mar your lipstick… it’s protected by a coat of clear Lip-Stae.\u00a0 Just brush on its liquid lustre… lips stay brillint, alluring for hours. \u00a0And clothes, cigarettes, glasses and the man in your life<\/em> can’t carry lipstick’s tell-tale marks!\u00a0 Safe, economical, and easy to use. At cosmetic counters everywhere. (my emphasis)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is so much to unpack here, but I think it all revolves around the fact that women are supposed to wear makeup, but pretend that the face that they put on is their real face.\u00a0 As the copy reads, lipstick leaves “tell-tale marks.”\u00a0 Those marks reveal a degree of deception regarding her true attractiveness and, in fact, this is exactly<\/a> how makeup was characterized in the Victorian era.\u00a0 This is why a woman’s lipstick must remain on her lips (and be left nowhere else) even when swimming or kissing.\u00a0 Because, in principle, she’s not wearing lipstick at all.<\/p>\n

This post originally appeared in 2009.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. I have always found it bizarre that lipstick is supposed to make a woman’s lips more irresistible, yet kissing a woman with lipstick gets sticky red or pink smudge all over both faces. So women dress up and look all gorgeous and then their dates can’t kiss them. Or, it’s the end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":65800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2089,120,108,23705],"class_list":["post-13345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-beauty","tag-sex","tag-sports","tag-vintage-stuff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/09\/2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13345"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65806,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13345\/revisions\/65806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}