Book Launch & Discussion – Lipstick’s Colourful Past: Lipstick Regulation, Sex Work, and Fraught Femininity

From Bloomsbury’s ‘Object Lessons’ series of books about the hidden lives of ordinary things comes Lipstick (2026) by Eileen G’Sell.

Join us for a book talk that will explore the history of the legal regulation of lipstick. The talk will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with Professor Heidi Matthews.

Book description

From Revlon to Glossier, from Marilyn to Gaga, lipstick is as shape-shifting and unwieldy as femininity itself.

Who wears lipstick today – as a matter of routine? And for those who do, is it out of obligation to a strict feminine standard, or some other reason entirely? Lipstick reconsiders the beauty world’s most conspicuous – and contentious – tool of artifice. Tossing expired ideas about femininity like so many tubes of melting wax, Lipstick explores how self-adornment can be a source of play, pleasure, and transformation, as well as how lipstick can knock gender norms off balance.

Book review

“What if pigmented wax was one of humanity’s oldest technologies of honesty? In this homage to the form, Eileen G’Sell gives us a lipstick for all. Her elegant book not only lays out the cultural evolution of the object, but points to the expansively feminist ethics and latently utopian politics of colorful mouths. Pucker up, dive in, and dispel your femmephobia today.”

Sophie Lewis, author of Enemy Feminims and Femmephilia