A new lipstick, MAGA Red No. 47 by GoRed Cosmetics, is advertised as “embodying patriotism with every swipe.”
But pairing red lipstick with patriotism is hardly new. During World War II, women in Allied countries wore red lipstick to boost national morale and stand against fascism with shades like Regimental Red and Fighting Red. The US military even recruited Elizabeth Arden to make a vibrant red lipstick for female Marines, said Gabriela Hernandez, cofounder of Bésame Cosmetics, which manufactures historically inspired lipsticks. Arden’s Montezuma Red led to a shade for women on the home front called Victory Red, which Hernandez began to reproduce in 2016.
Hernandez noted that many of her customers are “more conservative,” but part of the beauty of red lipstick is its universal — and bipartisan — appeal. “It’s been used throughout history as a sign of independence and power for women,” she said, “especially women in politics. Margaret Thatcher used it … so did Barbara Bush.”
Democratic congresswomen like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley have used it to engage with voters and signal change. “Can a congresswoman wear her hair in braids, rock a black leather jacket and a bold red lip?” a newly elected US Representative Pressley asked the crowd during her 2018 victory speech, making the answer resoundingly clear.
At her 2019 swearing-in ceremony, Ocasio-Cortez wore a bold red lip and glam gold hoops with her suffrage-white pantsuit in tribute to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The gesture resonated deeply with Xiomara Hernandez, an attorney who lives in Amherst and grew up in a family of Dominican women who always wore red lips and gold hoops. (Her favorite shade? All Heart by Clinique.) “I think it’s very powerful — especially for Black and brown women who are young, looking on, saying, ‘Hey, I could also be a congresswoman, I could also be a judge, because they actually look like me,’” she said.
Linda Wells, editor of the online beauty magazine Air Mail Look and founding editor in chief of Allure, doesn’t see red lipstick as a political statement “whatsoever,” but rather as “a statement of the importance of appearance and showing your best self to the world, and it’s a real statement of style,” she said. “Women always will say if you put on red lipstick, you can almost forget everything else, because you’ll look completely finished. … It’s a real confidence builder.”
Some red lipstick devotees associate it so deeply with their identity, it’s practically a uniform. Or, depending on the day, a bit of armor. Boston resident Katherine Bergeron, who wears Shake Your Ruby lip tint by the Crème Shop, said she appreciates red lipstick’s “history of defiance,” pointing to how American “Rosies” wore red lips “to thumb their noses at Nazi ideas about ‘natural women,’ and Holocaust survivors put on lipstick post-liberation of the camps.”
The difference between then and now is that WWII Victory Red united American women against a common enemy. Today, some might say, our country is at war with itself.
“I don’t feel conflicted about wearing red because MAGA uses the color — red does not belong to them,” said Bergeron, who did not vote for Trump. “Red is passion, it’s love, it’s blood, it’s fire, it’s life.”
Brooke Hauser can be reached at brooke.hauser@globe.com. Follow her @brookehauser.