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62 Food & Drug L.J. 165 (2007)
Reading Our Lips: The History of Lipstick Regulation in Western Seats of Power

handle is hein.journals/foodlj62 and id is 177 raw text is: Reading our Lips: The History of Lipstick Regulation in Western Seats of Power SARAH E. SCHAFFER* I. INTRODUCTION This paper traces the history of lipstick's social and legal regulation in Western seats of power, begining in Ur circa 3,500 B.C. and continuing to the present-day United States. Sliced in this manner, lipstick's history emerges as heavily cyclical across the Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Western European, English and American reigns of power. Examining both the informal social and formal legal regulation of lipstick throughout these eras reveals that lipstick's fluctuating significance concerning wearers' class and gender has always largely determined the extent and types of lipstick regulations that Western societies put in place. That said, how- ever, advancing medical and scientific knowledge has also played an increasingly important secondary role in lipstick's regulatory scheme. Thus, lipstick status laws, primarily intended to protect men, long predated laws concerning lipstick safety. Safety laws, in turn, long focused solely on human safety before, very recently, also branching out into environmental and animal safety. In the future, Western societies should expect to see a continuation of lipstick status regulations, albeit probably informal social ones, as well as increasingly comprehensive lipstick safety regulations regarding human, environmental and animal well-being. II. LIPSTICK IN THE ANCIENT WORLD A. Ur and Egypt Historically, one was relatively less likely to die from lipstick than from most other cosmetics products. This does not mean, however, that lipstick has a past lacking in either danger or fascination. Lipstick's appropriately colorful history began with Queen Schub-ad of ancient Ur.' Circa 3,500 B.C.,2 this Sumerian queen used lip colorant made with a base of white lead and crushed red rocks.' The Sume- Ms. Schaffer is a 2006 graduate from Harvard Law School. She is the 2006 winner of an Honor- able Mention in the H. Thomas Austern Memorial Writing Awards Competition. To situate Ur for modem Western readers: Ur stood a major city in Sumer, one of Mesopotamia's four distinct civilizations that also included Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia. We now know the entire region as Iraq. Sally Pointer, THE ARTIFICE OF BEAUTY: A HISTORY AND PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PERFUMES AND COSMETICS, 11 (2005). 2 See, e.g., Fenja Gunn, THE ARTIFICIAL FACE: A HISTORY OF COSMETICS, 35 (1973). But see, Pointer, supra note 1, at 11 (suggesting the date of first lipstick use closer to 2,500 B.C.). I See, Gunn, supra note 2, at 35 (stating that this original lip color contained white lead). See also, Meg Cohen Ragas & Karen Kozlowski, READ MY LIPS: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF LIPSTICK, 13 (1998) (stating that this original lip color contained crushed red rocks). Such information about ancient lipsticks' components has recently become available through gas chromatography, which allows for identification of minute residues extracted from old containers. Pointer, supra note 1, at x. The ingredient identification remains imperfect, however, because: some ingredient compounds have altered or disappeared over time, cosmetics containers often served multiple uses and so contain residues from multiple substances and the waterproofing treatments used on the cosmetics containers interferes with residue analysis. Pointer, supra note 1, at x-xi. Fortunately, in some cases, written evidence can help corroborate the chromatographic findings or help fill the informational gaps. Pointer, supra note 1, at ix.

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