Lipstick Overview.

We have also had needs that other creatures do not have, and have always tried in any way possible to meet those needs, whatever the level of work was needed to accomplish such goals. We have created footwear, endless tools, clothing, makeups, jewelries, etc. Face painting goes back to pre history and is believed to have started as a way of assisting in hunting or in warfare, and the males of our tribes had everything to do with it. Then it became about beauty. Especially the lips.

Attracting the opposite sex for the purposes of finding a mate exists in all creatures on the planet. The face and the lips were especially of importance to humans as we are upright animals, clothed for the most part, and our faces are the first part of us that often either attracts or repels another human. In the beginning lip coloring came from all natural sourcing such as fruits and other plants liquids. Then precious gems would be ground up and used as glitter to add color and spice to lips and faces. First it was the peoples of Mesopotamia. Then of the Indus valley, and then of course it was all about Egypt.

The Egyptians had so many creations. Juices, gem glitters, insect bloods for pigments, and ground up softer minerals of different shades. It was Egypt that managed to spread such ideas into Europe and Greece, via relationships with the the Greek and Roman empires. Lipstick found a popular home in the Roman world for centuries, until Christianity took control, and managed to equate the use of makeup with that of satanic worship. It is said that lipstick was relegated to the lives of poor women and prostitutes attempting to attract men as a way of surviving the ravaged of abject poverty.

We have Queen Elizabeth the 1st. to thank for the eventual resurgence of lipstick as well as other facial makeups. She was known to love the bleached white face look contrasted with bright colored lipsticks, and paid no mind to how the churches may have felt about such liberties at that time. Makeup fell off again for a few hundred years, but remained in the shadows, just waiting to explode. Then industrial revolution of the 1900s was just what was needed to give makeup, especially blushes and lipstick, their chance to take hols and never let go.

Makeup, especially lipstick became a full blown phenomenon during the 20th century, and is now considered a basic essential for women in society, and with the greater level of freedoms now given to alternative lifestyles, various types of men are again feeling free to indulge. Lipstick is number one in cosmetics, and will be for centuries to come.