Lipsticks were first produced in Africa and today they are the indispensable beauty item for women around the world. In fact, lipstick is the best-selling beauty product of all time. Face to Face Africa says the first record of black lipstick use was 4000BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Lipstick was first used to protect lips from the elements—and men and women applied it. In those days, women mixed scented oils with flowers to add color.

“Sometimes, women scrubbed their lips with mud and crushed stones to make them soft and smooth and applied honey to sweeten the lips. This made them sexually appealing,” according to Face to Face Africa.

Egyptians and Sumerians, as well as Mesopotamians, had strong social, historical, trade and commercial links so they picked up on each other’s social norms and behaviors. Egyptians exhibited great interest and love for lipstick, turning production into an art form and improving it with time. In Egypt, both men and women wore lipstick and it was considered a status symbol and it was worn by the royalty and rich merchants alike. The first lipstick formulas contained red dye derived from seaweed, iodine and bromine mannite. The mixture, although beautiful, were poisonous and led to the term, “Kiss of Death.”

Still, Egypt became the lipstick manufacturing center of the ancient world. Red, purple, black and blue-black were very popular shades, but the No. 1 color was carmine, which was (and is) extracted from the cochineal insect. Egyptians made their lipstick shimmer by mixing it with ground gemstones. To achieve purple shades, they mixed purple extracts from seaweeds or crushed beetles with scented oils and waxes. They crushed bugs to create the crimson color adding crushed gemstones and white lead for a shimmering effect. It is said that Cleopatra made her own lipstick, using flowers, red ocher, fish scale, crushed ants and carmine in a beeswax base. Her signature shade, like for so many women, was red. In time, lipstick went out of fashion. The Catholic church banned lipstick, which it associated with prostitutes. Efforts to prevent the beauty product from becoming mainstream have obviously failed because today lipstick is the best-selling beauty accessory and is found in nearly every woman’s handbag.


Other Face Paints

With more than 3,000 tribes, Africa is rich in cultures, traditions, languages and perceptions of beauty. What constitutes beauty and indeed, beauty trends and ideals, varies. Blogger Najla Kaddour notes tribal makeup is a key facet of the culture. Makeup, usually in the form of face paint, is used for very different ceremonies that have very different social significance such as hunting, religious and traditional or military rituals. Face paints also function as social markers, to distinguish boys from men, men from older men, men from women and tribal members from outsiders. Face painting also signifies status.

Well-known tribes across Africa include the Zulus of South Africa, Lesotho and Zimbabwe; the Maasai, from Kenya and Tanzania; the Khoi San of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa; and the Yoruba of Nigeria, Benin, Ghana and Togo. Other tribes include the Xhosa of South Africa; the Hausa from Niger, Gabon, Burkina Faso and Cameroon; the Himba of Angola and Namibia; the Borana Oromo from Ethiopia and Kenya; the Kalenjin of Kenya; the Chaga of Tanzania; and the Fulani of Nigeria, Guinea, Sudan and Senegal. Color plays a very significant role, not only in facial paints, but in their lives in general. The Ndebeles of South Africa are well known for their colorful beans and house paintings and designs. The Maasai are renowned for their colorful dress and designs and with red featuring very strongly in the dress code and the facial paints.

Clays of different colors, together with some dried plants and flowers, are the more popular ingredients used to make face paint. The colors all carry special meaning. Black is usually associated with power, evil, death and mystery, while gray usually infers security, authority, maturity and stability. Purple normally stands for royalty, luxury, wisdom and passion, while yellow represents joy, energy and warmth. Red stands for danger, daring, urgency and energy while blue denotes peace, calmness, confidence and affection. Green symbolizes life, growth, freshness and healing, and white means hope, purity and light.

Tribal symbols are the visual keys that have meaning to people and communities that share a common heritage around a given symbol. In Africa, many tribal families use symbols to tell stories, provide information and impart lessons. These symbols are sacred and are very often used in ceremonial and religious occasions.

Symbols are incorporated into and featured strongly in face painting, fabrics, pottery, and interior and exterior wall designs. The Ashanti of Ghana have a special fabric called Kente cloth which has yellow and gold designs in reference to its old nickname, Gold Coast. Tribal art differs and depends on the person’s rank in society. A person of a higher rank may have a more elaborate and more complicated face makeup. A person may start with basic tribal face paint (or tattoos) and as they rise through the ranks, more symbols are added to match achievements and rank.

Permanent Black Lipstick
The Fulani women, who belong to one of the nomadic cow-herding tribes of West Africa, have black paint tattooed around their mouths, almost in the form of a permanent black lipstick. The tattoos are a symbol of beauty and courage for Fulani women. During the “Tchoodi” ceremony, women perform rituals as a cultural rite of passage and a sign that a girl has reached puberty. The distinctive black lip tattoos make the young woman or girl more attractive to Fula men.

Blogger Lilia Leung describes the week-long Guérewol ceremony of the nomadic Tuareg and the Wodaabe tribes. This week-long courting ritual takes place at West African gathering points in September, the end of the rainy season. The Fulani are traditionally cattle-herders and traders in the Sahel region where they move from pasture to pasture as the seasons change. Today, much of the population is in Niger, though Fulani also live in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and the Central African Republic. Usually, Wodaabe clans and families live in the desert in isolation, but for a week in September, Woodabe clans gather for the Guérewol festivities at a location that is only disclosed a few days before the event.

The Woodabe are polygamous. Both men and women have sexual freedom and are free to pursue new partners. It’s very common for both men and women to have multiple marriages, and a person’s first marriage is arranged by their parents. Guérewol is an opportunity for the individual to seek a second marriage partner based on love. The main event of the Guérewol is a beauty pageant where the men are the participants. Physical beauty is regarded very highly by Woodabe people and they have strict criteria for what they consider to be beautiful, including height, white teeth and eyes, a well-defined nose, and good posture. In preparation for the pageant, the young men take their time, in a painstaking effort, sometimes up to six hours, to apply makeup and accessories that accentuate their physical features and beauty. They paint their faces in bright red, yellow and white clays, and add black eyeliner and black lipstick to highlight and outline their eyes and lips. Traditional dress show off the physique.

As the pageant begins, young Woodabe men perform the Yaake, a customary song and dance as a group, to impress the young women. Winners are selected by three female judges, but the men know that every single young woman in the audience is also a judge. The victors are hailed among the Woodabe clans and may choose a partner. With the pageant complete, the remainder of the week is spent in clan meetings, marriage negotiations and other social events.

From antiquity to today, color will always play a key role in African culture. For more on color, see “The Psychology of Color” on Happi.com.

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Raymond Chimhandamba
Handas Consulting

Raymond Chimhandamba is founder and director of Handas Consulting (Pty) Ltd. He has 20 years’ experience in the FMCG sector in Africa region and experience in launching and building FMCG cosmetic and personal care brands in Africa. Chimhandamba is an internationally published FMCG expert and a thought leader in the hygiene sector in Africa, an international speaker and a mobile tech enthusiast. He is based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Contact him at [email protected]