What is femininity? What defines our understanding of gender and sexuality? How does self-adornment fit into societal ideologies of womanhood?
“Lipstick,” a new book by WashU College Writing professor Eileen G’Sell, explores these intersections between self-adornment, gender, sexuality, and femininity through the lens of an everyday object — lipstick.
On Wednesday, March 4, WashU’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department, Association for Women Faculty, and Office of Public Scholarship will host a book launch for “Lipstick,” which is the newest book in Bloomsbury Publishing’s “Object Lessons” series.
“Object Lessons” was co-founded by Christopher Schaberg and Ian Bogost in 2013. Schaberg is a writer and editor with a special focus on environmental thought and the culture of air travel. He also happens to be the director of Public Scholarship at WashU. Bogost, also a writer and editor, has had an astonishingly varied career: he is an award-winning video game designer and artist, he worked in the digital tech field while in graduate school, and he is a contributing editor for The Atlantic. He is currently the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor and a Faculty Fellow at WashU, and he serves as the co-executive director of the Office of Public Scholarship.
“Object Lessons” is an ongoing series of short books about the hidden lives of ordinary, everyday things. The books are intentionally brief, but written in a wide variety of styles — some are based on interviews and written analytically, while others are introspective reflections of the author. The topics range from physical objects, such as a golf ball or a shipping container, to abstract concepts, like silence or the idea of fakeness. Others are not easily categorizable, like jet lag and whale songs. The books span a variety of subjects, from the archaeological to the medical, from the technological to the environmental. Writers can pitch an “Object Lesson” on nearly any ordinary thing, as long as there is a story to be told.
“[‘Lipstick’] is for anyone who has ever wondered why femininity is so fraught, why ‘appearing girly’ can be so stigmatized in certain quarters, but also so mandated in others,” G’Sell wrote in a statement to Student Life. “I want this book to encourage readers to challenge their assumptions about feminine adornment — painting the face specifically. Humans have painted their faces, tattooed and shaved their bodies, for thousands of years. Why and how is the act so charged in terms of gender today?”
G’Sell was invited to write a book for “Object Lessons” in 2023 after a conversation with Schaberg.
“I was known as a WashU professor who publishes frequently in public forums like Jacobin, The Baffler, and Hyperallergic,” she said. “During our conversation, I expressed admiration for the book series, and he said, ‘Well, you should write one!’”
The crossroad of self-adornment and femininity has long been of interest to G’Sell, and in choosing her subject, she wanted an object that allowed her to explore that intersection.
“I always knew it would be lipstick, because lipstick is such an iconic, but also contentious, object — and it overlaps so well with larger conversations about gender, sexuality, femininity, feminism, and power — conversations I’ve been part of for years with my film and visual art criticism,” G’Sell said. “I also happen to have long loved lipstick, such that I thought my personal story and voice would be relevant.”
“Lipstick” is based around a series of interviews that G’Sell conducted with nearly 100 women and gender-nonconforming individuals ranging from 18 to 78 years old from all around the world.
“I distributed a survey [in] the summer of 2024 to a broad array of people in my social network; I also encouraged certain friends and acquaintances to share with their families and communities,” she said. “I wasn’t aiming for quantitative data to aggregate and make deductions from. Rather, I was looking for voices, stories, and perspectives that differed from my own.”
G’Sell hopes that “Lipstick” will reach a broad audience, beyond those who enjoy beauty culture. She emphasized that “Lipstick” is neither an endorsement of lipstick itself nor an attempt at persuading people to wear lipstick — instead, she uses lipstick to explore and confront complex societal issues of femininity and gender norms.
“[T]he book is not advancing the idea that everyone should enjoy lipstick or that everyone should wear it. Like all vestiges of femininity, lipstick is fraught! That’s why it’s exciting to write about.”
The book launch will center around a panel featuring WashU faculty members and students in discussion on the book. While G’Sell will talk about her writing process and share an excerpt from the book, the event will focus on the faculty and students featured in the book, including many of G’Sell’s former students.