Marilyn Stowe Blog

Seeing red: lipstick, sex appeal and a glamorous assassin

The recent assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai has caught everyone’s attention, not least because Dubai’s police are now searching for a team of assassins who are thought to have entered the emirate with fake passports.

I was particularly drawn to the stunning photograph of “Gail Folliard”: a pleasantly smiling woman who carried a fake Irish passport and identity, and formed part of the alleged assassination team. In her passport photo she has long blonde hair, piercing blue eyes and is wearing bright red lipstick.

Newspapers have focused on her as an example of a glamorous female assassin. However Hugo Rifkind, writing in the Times, had another take: “Gail my backside. She’s a bloke.” He quoted the well-known super spy Austin Powers: “She’s a man, man”.

I agree. But not because of the Adam’s apple that is supposed to be so prominent in her photo. It was the ruby red lipstick that stood out for me.

Do real women in real life really wear red lipstick?

The colour red

An experiment, carried out in 2008 by the University of Rochester, USA, involved showing men photographs of women who were either wearing red or framed by the colour. These “red” women were rated as significantly more alluring and sexually appealing by men than women wearing or framed by other colours.

The researchers also asked how much money the men would be prepared to spend on a date with the women in the pictures – and found that a women wearing red was “more likely to score an invitation to the prom and to be treated to a more expensive outing”.

As women know, however, red isn’t an easy colour to wear. Women have to make sure that a given shade of red suits their age, skin colouring and hair. Getting it wrong can result in a fashion faux pas; getting it right means you instantly stand out.

I was interested to note from the Rochester study that women wearing red can be perceived as powerful and aggressive. In business, men coming up against women who are wearing the colour may perform worse against them. (Is this perhaps the reason why women are expected to wear black in court?)

Red lipstick

Red lipstick is even harder to wear than a red dress or a red suit. I have been trying to recall the number of women I’ve met, professionally and socially, who wear red lipstick. I can’t think of a single one. I believe that only the bravest of the brave dare to wear red lipstick in real life, no matter how hard the sell from glossy adverts that declare red lips “are so this season”.

Wearing red lipstick certainly has its advantages, but as we real women know the disadvantages of red lipstick are that much greater. If worn in daylight with anything other than the theatrical pizzazz of Dita Von Teese (especially when it starts to wear off) we look washed out, older than our years, thin-lipped and truly awful. Unfortunately, red lipstick makes many of us look like shockers.

It is true that every time Chanel or YSL or Dior brings out a new shade of bright red, I love the glamour, the colour and the packaging. I rush to the department store and buy one before they all sell out (which they do like hot cakes), imagining like everybody else that I will look stunning too. Before long though, this season’s red lipstick is relegated from handbag to makeup bag. There it remains in perpetuity, keeping last season’s “must have” red lipstick company – because that too didn’t look right.

While red lipstick may be a feature of fashion magazines and runways, and is often seen on the stage or a film set, who I wonder wears it nowadays in real life?

Real women

However I also have a theory that the more successful the woman (unless she works in fashion), the more “normally” dressed she is likely to be. So what if men make a beeline for red? She doesn’t need, or have much time, to draw attention to herself physically. She knows her allure comes from her abilities, not her sexual attractiveness to men. In fact, in my professional world, the most dynamic women don’t even have time for a manicure, let alone wear bright red lipstick. I can even recall once being complimented for my “fabulous…brain”. I obviously wasn’t wearing red that day!

Real women, doing real jobs every day are far too busy to worry about the need to keep fixing their bright red lipstick. They aren’t likely to wear red lipstick unless they are going somewhere very glamorous.

And wouldn’t “Gail Folliard”, assuming she is a real woman, know that too? Surely she would much prefer to blend into the background and avoid attention while going about her deadly job?

Instead the passport picture shows her gazing alluringly towards the camera with red lipstick firmly in place.  And it is those red lips that not only pose numerous questions, but also answer many of them for me:

“Gail Folliard” is indeed “a man, man”.

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