what’s the lipstick index?
In the early 2000s, Estée Lauder executive Leonard Lauder coined the term “lipstick index” to explain why lipstick sales rose during economic downturns. The idea was simple: when people can’t afford big luxuries, they reach for small ones—a swipe of red that costs far less than a designer handbag but offers a similar rush of optimism.
AFFORDABLE Comfort
Today, that small luxury has taken on a glossy new form. The modern lipstick index is all about tinted balms, oils, and “lip treatments” that promise comfort as much as colour. But what does it mean that our most accessible form of comfort has become a $26 lip balm?
Walk into any beauty store—or scroll through TikTok—and you’ll see the evidence of this new wave. The “lip routine” has become a ritual: exfoliate, line, balm, gloss. Brands like Rhode, Summer Fridays, Olehenriksen and Laneige have turned shiny hydration into an aesthetic category of its own. For outsiders, especially those uninterested in beauty, these products seem interchangeable: clear, pink, maybe vanilla-scented or scent-free. But for those who buy them, each one carries a subtle distinction. The cooling metal tip, the distinction between an artificial versus natural scent, the design of the tube—tiny details that make each balm feel like a new experience rather than a duplicate.
This is where the lipstick index meets something deeper than consumer data: emotion. These purchases are not just about appearance; they are about feeling.
The Emotional Buying Cycle
It starts innocently enough. Winter arrives, your lips are dry, and you buy a balm—maybe even the one that everyone online swears by. It’s self-care, practical, nothing more. Then comes the second: a duplicate for your bag, because “it’s annoying to keep moving it around.” The third one might be tinted. By the fourth or fifth, practicality has given way to something else: the reward system we create for ourselves. A tough week deserves a gloss. A bad grade, a new flavour.
I’ve caught myself in this loop, too. The cycle feels harmless, after all, we’re talking about a lip balm, not a new pair of Manolo Blahniks—but that’s precisely why it’s powerful. Retail therapy works not because we’re shallow (or not only because of that) but because it offers a small, controlled form of gratification in a society that often feels uncontrollable. The act of buying something new, especially something marketed as care, mimics the feeling of taking care of ourselves.
And yet, there’s a subtle shift happening underneath the sheen. Emotional coping, better found in conversation, rest, or reflection, has become increasingly tied to consumption. When we feel off balance, our instinct isn’t to pause—it’s to purchase. The “add to cart” moment replaces the deep breath we might otherwise take.
SELF-CARE Culture
The point isn’t to shame anyone for buying lip balm. In fact, one of the reasons this trend resonates so deeply with many is that it feels safe. We live in an economy where everything—from rent to tuition—feels out of reach, and yet, for a few dollars, you can have something new, something pretty, something that feels like control. The beauty industry has learned to market that feeling expertly.
The language of “self-care” has become the vocabulary of consumerism. We are told to “romanticize our lives,” to “buy the little luxury,” to treat every small moment like an aesthetic experience. In moderation, that can be empowering—a refusal to let daily life feel dull. But it also creates a cycle: emotional discomfort → buying → temporary relief → repeat. The balm doesn’t fix the problem; it just glosses over it.
TikTok and Instagram Reel culture intensifies this by turning routine into performance. The endless “get ready with me” videos normalize constant consumption disguised as self-expression. It’s easy to believe we’re joining a shared ritual, but what we’re often joining is a feedback loop where the solution to every emotional discomfort is something new to buy. There’s a subtle irony here: the very products meant to soothe us also keep us restless. The satisfaction fades quickly, leaving us searching for the next scent, the next tube, the next “must-have.”
A Glossy Kind of Comfort
If the original lipstick index was a story about resilience during hard times, the new version tells us something more complicated. It’s not just about economic anxiety—it’s about emotional fatigue. Our small luxuries have become small coping mechanisms, and that should make us pause.
When we buy that lip balm, we’re not just choosing a colour or scent; we’re choosing a feeling of control, however fleeting. And that’s not inherently bad—it’s human. But it does raise a deeper question about the kind of comfort we’ve been taught to seek.
If we didn’t have $26 lip oils to fix a bad day, what would we have instead? Maybe we’d have longer walks, more talks, slower nights. Maybe we’d rediscover comfort that doesn’t come with a barcode. Perhaps we’d even learn to sit with discomfort rather than rush to gloss over it.
Many of us have become uneasy with the idea of not feeling good all the time. But here’s a demanding philosophical question worth asking: Are we really meant to feel good all the time?
The human experience is textured—it’s shaped by the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. Feeling good constantly shouldn’t be the goal; it’s in the moments of distress, when we have to sit in and with uncomfortable feelings, that we grow the most. We’re constantly told to “protect our peace,” but sometimes the only thing that’s being protected is our incapability to grow. Real peace isn’t built by avoiding distress; it often requires moving through it. The process of getting there can be messy, but that’s where regulation and resilience are actually learned.
The answer doesn’t have to be anti-beauty or anti-buying—it just has to be more conscious. Because sometimes, the most comforting aspect of the lip balm isn’t that it shields our lips from dryness, but that it shields us from engaging with our actual dilemmas.
All of this isn’t to say you shouldn’t keep your lips moisturised, by the way—if you’re looking for one to own, my personal favourite is the Rhode lip balm in Ribbon.