How Red Lipstick Defeated Hitler
Red has always been a colour to symbolise life, courage, anger, love, war and so much more with the common theme linking all these being passion. For centuries, fashion and beauty have been used as an ingenious tool for displaying political and personal beliefs, helping a person to bolster their own strength and confidence. It, therefore, makes sense that red lipstick has been used for centuries for exactly that - a way for women to express themselves. Burlesque superstar and red lipstick aficionado Dita Von Teese once said that ‘Heels and lipstick will put God into people,’ and no truer words have been said. There are myriad reasons why the allied forces managed to defeat Hitler and his fascist regime of the second world war, and some may argue that there isn’t one concrete reason. Instead, lots of little acts merged together and won. So, this is how red lipstick helped us win the war.
Some of our first representations of red lipstick from history come from ancient Egypt where the wearing of red lipstick was frowned upon as it was designated for prostitutes, and this would be a common thought all the way up until the very early 20th century. In the early 1900s and with the rise of the women’s suffrage movement, several American suffragettes such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman chose to publicly wear bright red lipstick in order to shock men. Of course, most of these men condemned such a fashion statement, declaring it sinful and distasteful. This use of red lipstick was not just powerful, it was feminine. Of course, not all women jumped at the chance to adopt such a bold lip shade, but with time moving towards the late 30s red was almost commonplace.
Red lipstick symbolised freedom, independence, female drive, confidence and rebellion - something Adolf Hitler was vehemently against. In his eyes, makeup and really any form of expression via fashion was anti-aryan. To him, the perfect German woman would be clean, wholesome and fresh-faced and he prohibited any of the women around him from wearing makeup or from painting their nails. Meanwhile, in the allied countries, women were entering the workplace in order to aid the war effort. It didn’t take long for them to clock on to Hitler’s viewpoint on powerful women, with him very famously stating that Queen Elizabeth the Queen's mother was ‘the most dangerous woman in Europe’ due to her public strength and energy.
While the production of cosmetics obviously took a back seat during the war, lipsticks that were manufactured carried names such as ‘victory red’ or ‘patriot red’, encouraging women to don the shade in order to show their pride for their country. If a woman couldn’t afford or wasn’t able to source a red lipstick she might have used beetroot juice to create the same effect. In the US, women entering the armed forces were required to sport bright red lippie as part of their official uniform.
Within the span of just a few decades, red lipstick went from being sexually immoral and deviant to patriotic and courageous. Most importantly, it became a symbol of opposing fascism and the strict rules Hitler had in place for women. Instead, red lipstick showed the freedom of expression available to women in allied countries. The truth is that in life there is only so much the average person can do to end a war alone, but when we band together and find a clever and easy way to deter and enrage the enemy we can bring down almost anything.
