I read this courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, Bloomsbury. It’s out on Feb 19.

I have a fraught relationship with the idea of femininity. I obstinately rebelled against participating in most forms for a long time, for complex reasons that mostly had to do with what I thought was important about my identity. Eventually, I realised I was being stupid, and that things I enjoyed were not things that got in the way of who I was. I was 35 when I decided actually, I do like lipstick, and started regularly wearing it to work, and when I went out.

So this new Object Lessons, about lipstick, and in particular about how it is viewed, used, stigmatised, discussed, and historicised? This book was written for me.

And it is very well written. As with all of this series, the book is intensely personal as well as being well researched and reported. Given the way lipstick is viewed by different groups and individuals I particularly liked the way G’Sell incorporated the views of other people – those who love wearing it, and those who hate it, all for valid and important reasons. There aren’t all that many apparently innocuous objects that can get such intense, contradictory, and equally important reactions (although the bra does spring to mind, as it were).

As always, we get some history – folks of all genders wearing makeup in ancient Greece, 1930s film femme fatales, etc – as well as some anthropology (Iranian women wearing lipstick, examining the perennial comment about sales of lipstick going up in times of economic hardship), along with the intensely personal reflections.

The list of chapter titles will give a sense of what the book encompasses:

• Painted Ladies and Tainted Men
• Painted Ladies and Painted Men
• Lipstick Feminism and Sticky Pleasures
• Whitewashed Beauty, Appropriation, and Lipstick Legacies
• A Femme-Friendlier Future?

I loved it. This is a book for anyone who has thought about what it means to wear lipstick. or makeup more generally.