Yes, you read that correctly. Lipstick became popular in the early 1910s, when leaders of the suffragette movement such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, started wearing lip rouge at rallies, associating it with women's emancipation and female rebellion.
"The main ingredient of red colored lip stain was carmine, which is made out of cochineal insects," says Ashley Miller, a vintage makeup and fashion expert and an editor at Flea Market Insiders,"So carmine is essentially the blood of crushed lice, which sounds disgusting but is still used as a makeup ingredient today."
According to Miller, lipstick prototypes in the 1900s were made from castor oil, stag fat, beeswax, and of course, carmine. The lipstick situation improved after World War I, when synthetic chemicals allowed for a more natural look that miraculously didn't rot.
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