Why women in Allied countries wore red lipstick to protest Hitler during WWII

For years, rumors have circulated that women in Allied countries during World War II wore red lipstick as a way to stand up to Germany’s Nazi Chancellor Adolf Hitler. According to the claim, he favored clean, makeup-free faces.

For example, a post on X claimed Hitler thought red lipstick was “impure” (archived):

https://x.com/Sunthar_16/status/2011296017036308744

The post read:

Adolf Hitler HATED RED LIPSTICK

 He believed German women should look Natural, Simple, and Restrained. To him, makeup was UN-GERMAN, symbolizing artificiality and moral decay. He viewed bold red lipstick as impure, a sign of excessive sexuality and French influence, and reportedly banned it for women visiting his private residence.

The claim has also turned up on Reddit, Facebook, X and Instagram.

This is true. We found that this fact actually gave rise to enduring lipstick brands and colors. 

In an interview on WNYC show The Takeaway, British journalist Madeleine Marsh, author of the book “Compacts and Cosmetics: Beauty from Victorian Times to the Present Day,” said red lipstick went against Hitler’s idea of the ideal woman:

“The Aryan ideal was a pure, un-scrubbed face. Visitors to Hitler’s country retreat, lady visitors were actually given a little list of things they must not do: avoid excessive cosmetics, avoid red lipstick, and on no account ever are they to color their nails.”

We found further evidence that Nazis viewed clean faces and simplicity as the ideal for girls and women. For example, in a 2021 paper published in The Saber and Scroll Historical Journal titled “The Bund Deutscher Mädel [the League of German Girls] and the Indoctrination of the German Girl,” scholar Sarah Weiler wrote:

The goal began with creating a new, Nazi femininity — a sharp contrast to how the Weimar woman were perceived — the Nazi woman was simple, restrained, and knew her place in society, subjugated first to her father and then her husband. Gone was the cosmopolitan woman of the Weimar who drank, smoked, painted her face, and dressed in the style of the French. German women were to be subdued in their beauty, with simple clothes and humble plaits, the human embodiment of Nordic simplicity.

Further, in a 1943 speech, Nazi Party chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels reiterated this idea:

What good are beauty shops that encourage a cult of beauty and take enormous time and energy? In peace they are wonderful, but a waste of time during war. Our women and girls will be able to greet our victorious returning soldiers without their peacetime finery.

In other words, perhaps more significant than Hitler’s personal distaste for red lipstick, historical research shows the Nazi ideal of femininity was clean faces on girls and women.

Red lipstick had been a symbol of defiance long before World War II. While red lips in ancient Egypt were the prerogative of the elite — Cleopatra famously wore red lip makeup — they soon were associated with women of ill repute (sex workers had to wear it by law in ancient Greece so as not to pass for “decent” ladies).

But red lips gained favor again when women began to fight for their rights in the early 20th century. Rachel Felder, an American journalist, dedicated a book to the cosmetic titled “Red Lipstick: An Ode to a Beauty Icon.” In it, she recounts how, when the suffragettes in the New York City marched for their right to vote, they first stopped by the shop of Elizabeth Arden to pick up a tube of red lipstick. Arden, who had recently opened her shop, supported their cause, and handed them out for free. After this, suffragettes around the world began to wear red lipstick as well. 

The lip color returned in fashion during World War II. As soon as women in Allied countries and in the resistance learned of Hitler’s distaste for it, they adopted it as a show of resistance. In Britain, Felder says, the women were so intent on wearing red lipstick they would stain their lips with beet juice if they could not find or afford the tubes.

The Allied powers took note, and the U.S. Army commissioned new red lipstick for its female staff and troops. Victory Red appeared (which the company Bésame relaunched in 2016), and Elizabeth Arden’s Montezuma Red even matched the red piping of the women’s Marine uniform, as shown in this advertisement for the lipstick in Vogue on April 15, 1944. The U.S. Army thought it would project resolve, showing women were joining the fight, and boost morale.

This history shows that makeup isn’t just a frivolous pursuit, but that it can shape the culture, even affecting the course of war.

Sources