Overview

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. 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.

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Reviews

Brilliant, biting, and irresistibly stylish, Lipstick treats beauty as the serious subject that it is. With deep insight, lyrical precision, and humor, Eileen G'Sell examines how painted lips expose the tensions between conformity and self-expression, beauty standards and personal agency. Less a book about makeup, and more about what we make of ourselves, this is cultural criticism at its most relatable and relevant. * Zahra Hankir, culture writer and author of Eyeliner: A Cultural History * 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 Feminisms and Femmephilia *

Author Information

Eileen G’Sell is Teaching Professor of College Writing at Washington University, St. Louis, USA. She is also the film critic for The Hopkins Review, an award-winning literary and culture magazine published by Johns Hopkins University. Her writing has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Baffler, Jacobin, Los Angeles Review of Books, Belt Magazine, Current Affairs, Film Quarterly, and Hyperallergic, among other publications. In 2023, she received the Rabkin prize in arts journalism.

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