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Great Lips

Hard Times but Your Lips Look Great

With the specter of another recession, brands like Clinique and DuWop Cosmetics are preparing for a big year in lip color, for two reasons.

First, they would like to see a return to lipstick, which usually costs slightly more than gloss. Second, the companies believe that in down times women will continue to splurge on lip lacquer even as they make do with last season’s dress.

But do economists, and not just companies that need to move a lot of lip color, believe that lipstick sales could skyrocket as the economy tanks? And what’s the draw of lipstick in particular for women worried about having to pay as much for gas as they would a handbag?

Not only is the lipstick theory plausible, “it’s perfectly consistent with all kinds of economic theory,” said Richard DeKaser, the chief economist with National City Corporation, a financial holding company and bank in Cleveland.

The theory is that several products or types of products enjoy better sales during economic downturns. One is switching to “inferior” or downscale substitutes like tuna instead of salmon fillets. Lipsticks, especially those with high brand name recognition don’t fall into the downscale category, but as the business woman in the article explained, lipstick can be a substitute for the impulse to buy an expensive blouse. This take on economic trends has some obvious weak points. One is that the only concrete example in the article was a woman that was going to buy and has been able to afford $280 blouses and satisfied her shopping impulse with $40 dollars worth of cosmetics. While it looks like we’re in the beginnings of a recession people that are weaning themselves off $280 blouses or shirts are not suffering in any real sense of the word. If you’re going to look at one or two products as indicators of real economic pain I’d look at peanut butter or cheap lunch meat sales. When the working class is suffering, and they’re the the ones that get the full impact of any downturn, they start packing a lunch instead of heading out to Taco Bell.

surf light

Ben Stein is not smart. He’s an actor that attempts to portray smart on the TeeVee, Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn’t Want You to Know…

2) Ben Stein’s speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup.
“Viewers of Expelled might think that Ben Stein has been giving speeches on college campuses and at other public venues in support of ID and against “big science.” But if he has, the producers did not include one. The speech shown at the beginning and end was staged solely for the sake of the movie. Michael Shermer learned as much by speaking to officials at Pepperdine University, where those scenes were filmed. Only a few of the audience members were students; most were extras brought in by the producers. Judge the ovation Ben Stein receives accordingly.

Being an actor Ben would know something about setting up a Potemkin village. Ben has affection for fakery, nonsense and faerie tales extends beyond lying to a few scientists and packing an audience with shills. His knowledge of history is easily surpassed by someone that got their college degree by one of the correspondence schools you find on match book covers, From Boing Boing

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.