Lipstick in the Time of Corona: Psychosocial Musings

Abstract

This article is a psycho-social musing regarding the importance of lipstick as an item of makeup at a time when its primary area of usage, the face, has been covered due to demands of health and safety as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Being a musing, the article does not follow any strict methodology and has been written based only on certain day-to-today observations. By looking at the continued sale of lipsticks on online platforms and the ideas regarding its importance and usage as explicated by online beauty personalities, this paper tries to understand the importance of lipstick as a tool of women’s self-esteem, body image, self-confidence, emancipation, beautification as well as a symbol of consumerism in the current times when it cannot be flaunted due to the face masks. By using theories of feminism, especially post-structural feminism, consumerism and psychological theories such as those related to self-esteem and defence mechanism, the article has tried to put forward a psychosocial explanation of the use of lipsticks in the pandemic times.