Not surprisingly, women have been reddening their lips for centuries, ever since around 2500 B.C. In ancient Egypt, a couple centuries later, Cleopatra famously wore it, coating her lips with a shade of crimson made from grinding red beetles. Her subjects reddened their lips as well, but used less-expensive ground red ochre as the colourant, which gave off a different, more rust-toned hue. Cleopatra’s red was an expression of her status, wealth, and authority.

Queen Elizabeth I, much later, loved red lips too. When she died at age 69, a thick coating of red stain—up to a half an inch, some historians believe—was left indelibly on her lips. When the current Queen Elizabeth was planning her coronation in 1953, she commissioned a special lipstick for the day that was created to match the rich burgundy shade of her ceremonial gown, that was dubbed “Balmoral Red.”

Unlike, say, a pale pink or muted mauve, red lipstick revels in both its femininity and power. That’s why it became a symbol of the suffragette movement, both in Britain and the U.S. Women wore it while protesting for the right to vote as a virtual uniform, as a symbol of their female force. At one especially big march in New York City in 1912, cosmetics entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden sent staff out alongside the protesters’ route on Fifth Avenue with cartons of tube of red lipstick, instructing them to hand it out to the suffragettes like one might offer water to runners during a marathon.

The real reason we are so drawn to red lipstick