Last week I showed that there is not sufficient historical evidence to back up the claim that Hitler hated red lipstick. In fact, there is some evidence to the contrary. It is likely that this was a propaganda line pushed by the United States Office of War Information and the British Ministry of Information. And when it comes to propaganda, it doesn’t really matter whether or not Hitler actually hated red lipstick.
So why was “Hitler hates red lipstick” an effective line? Because both Germany and America/Britain had specific visions of femininity and a woman’s role in the war, and lipstick was pushed as a symbol of Allied femininity.
The German feminine ideal was the bare-faced, unsexual mother of many Aryan children. This was the image featured in German propaganda. Propaganda Minister Goebbels himself addressed the German nation in 1933:
“…let me say this clearly: The first, best, and most suitable place for the woman is in the family, and her most glorious duty is to give children to her people and nation, children who can continue the line of generations and who guarantee the immortality of the nation. …This is the beginning of a new German womanhood. If the nation once again has mothers who proudly and freely choose motherhood, it cannot perish. …We hope that the concept of the German woman will again earn the honor and respect of the entire world. The German woman will then take her pride in her land and her people, in thinking German and feeling German. The honor of her nation and her race will be most important to her. Only a nation that does not forget its honor will be able to guarantee its daily bread.”[1]
The propaganda directed towards German women encouraged them to bear more children, primarily. This does not mean that German women didn’t have war jobs; as a result of Germany’s devastating WWI loss, it had been necessary for German women to integrate into the national workforce already. However, as the above 1933 address shows us, the Nazi’s planned to eliminate women from the workforce in its quest for an ideal nation. The Nazi party immediately began enacting restrictive quotas on women who could attend universities, or hold jobs in the medical and law fields.
And how did this contrast with the idealized image of women in Allied propaganda? The Allied woman was, in a word, glamorous.
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