Back in the early 2000s, right after 9/11 and the dot-com bubble bursting into a thousand digitized pieces, the chairman of Estee Lauder (the cosmetic company that owns brands like Clinique, MAC, Bobbi Brown, La Mer, and more) sculpted a new measurement of consumer demand, and it all had to do with lipstick. Leonard Lauder observed that when the U.S. was experiencing an economic downturn, women were more likely to forgo luxury items and instead buy lipstick, a relatively cheap(er) way to look and feel good on a budget. So, in theory, if we see lipstick sales skyrocketing, it means the U.S. economy is in a bad place. It’s called the “leading lipstick indicator,” “lipstick index,” or “lipstick effect.”
The lipstick effect can实际上可以追溯到大萧条, so Lauder wasn’t exactly sniffing out anything new. From 1929 to 1933, the beauty industry did fairly well, and while women scaled back on other goods, they purchased more lipstick. In 2008, during the Great Recession, L’Oreal, Beiersdorf, and Shiseido all confirmed that lipstick sales had gone up. According to The Guardian, L’Oreal showed 5.3 percent in revenue growth in the first quarter of that year alone. Kline, a market research firm, found that for every one percent increase in unemployment,women bought $25 million more每年使用口红。
在疯狂的压力和创伤时期，人们仍然愿意花钱在使他们感觉更好的事情上。
专家来回走动口红效应是否是评估经济健康的可靠方式。《纽约时报》在2008年的一篇文章中质疑该理论Hard Times, but Your Lips Look Great，有些专家认为口红的销售实际上并没有表明经济趋势。美容行业分析师卡伦·格兰特（Karen Grant）称其为“一厢情愿”，他说：“趋势的早期采用者正在进入口红潮流，并看到口红的销量增加。但这不是总体趋势。这更像是一种直觉的感觉，就像当您说是时候让裙子回来了。”
但是，一名名叫Melissa McQueeney的34岁妇女似乎肯定了口红效果是一件真实的事情。她告诉纽约时报，即使她对支付账单感到强调，她还是依靠新鲜的光泽度（技术上不唇膏，但靠近足够近），以使自己感觉更好。“这就是我新鲜的方式。她说，这让我感到女性化，即使我在汗水和运动鞋中也是如此。她解释说：“我什至没有尝试，我只是在挥霍。”
Self-care: The new lipstick indicator
2020年的全球大流行已经做到了，所以我们不仅被困在里面，而且即使我们确实去杂货或引起焦虑的理发，我们也用口罩遮住了一半的脸（主要是嘴巴）。在不久的将来，由于数百万人失业，另一个大萧条可能会迫在眉睫，许多人可以证明他们已经收紧了预算。可以肯定的是：他们不是在购买口红作为拾音器。
“Experts are now reporting beauty retails sales dropping between 20-30 percent in Q2 and into Q3, and as much as 50 percent in late Q1,”Ty Stewart, CEO & President of Simple Life Insure tells The Financial Diet. “The hypothesis behind the drop? People don’t wear makeup underneath masks or when staying at home.” It’s honestly a no-brainer.
那么，我们的新口红指标是什么？
It depends on who you talk to, but the common theme revolves around self-care products you can purchase online — which is not surprising. During times of insane stress and trauma, people are still willing to spend money on things that make them feel better, regardless of who they see. “For example, at-home waxing kits, DIY gel nail sets, and at-home hair cuts have all skyrocketed during the pandemic for several reasons: increased unemployment, state/city lockdowns, and increased future economic confidence. This has led members from Gen Z, millennials, and beyond to splurge on self-care items (many of which wouldn’t have considered buying a DIY/at-home kit pre-pandemic), while simultaneously decreasing overall economic output,”凯特琳·马格努森，自由职业者CFO的创始人告诉TFD。
Erin Papworth, financial coach, behavioral scientist, and creator of the FinTech app Nav.it, has been able to pull together some data based on their user’s spending patterns, giving her team insights on how (at least some) people are spending their money. They’re finding that folks are investing in streaming devices (流媒体增长了85％in March) as well as interior decor, specifically the office. Since many employers have made WFH indefinite (and in some cases, permanent), people are splurging on decor (online furniture sales shot up by 306 percent早在四月，确认了Papworth的发现）。
Skincare searches are skyrocketing
我所看到的，我所知道的是，我所知道的是，护肤兴趣上升了。Face masks (the goopy kind you slather on your T-zone), cleansers, and moisturizers have always been medicine cabinet staples, but there’s definitely been a surge in prioritizing these products, and possibly even going beyond to mimic the “spa” experience we’ve been missing out on, which is something beauty editor and friend, Emily Popp tells me. “In quarantine, I’ve been buying face masks, exfoliators and skincare tools, which feel very spa-like. I bought a rose quartz eye-roller the other day, and yes, it de-puffs my eyes, but also just the act of using it is relaxing. I’ve also been buying a lot more bath products because taking a bath is one of the simplest (and cheapest) ways to de-stress in your home,” she tells TFD.
从3月底到五月中旬，您可以看到将“护肤产品”输入Google趋势，您可以看到搜索量增加了100％以上（总体而言，搜索仍在增加）。好的口罩或去角质剂might set you back $50, but when you’ve stopped dressing up for work, paying for gas, and taking vacations, that $50 seems more reasonable — and like lipstick, you feel pampered. It’s a small price to pay when the world seems like it’s ending, right?
It seems like there really is nooneproduct that’s an indicator of how the 2020 pandemic has impacted the economy. And that’s probably because the modern world has never experienced such an unprecedented blow. Even in 1918, when the Spanish Flu killed millions across the globe,股市实际上没有影响。经济学家认为，这可能是由于第二次世界大战的结局以及吞噬潜在金融危机的乐观浪潮。
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What all this research has ultimately proven, though, is that indulging ourselves with reasonably-priced “pick-me-up” material goods during a time of crisis — whether that’s a Disney+ subscription, a new moisturizer, or a fresh tube of cherry red lipstick — is a self-soothing mechanism deeply rooted in American history. And everyone self-soothes differently. When I was first laid off in March, I bought myself a sketchpad and watercolors, thinking this activity could help distract me from COVID-19 and career anxiety. But we all cope in different ways, for different reasons.
“I bought an aqua eyeliner from Glossier that I’d probably never wear IRL,” my friend Sam Mendez, an interior designer, told me, and added, “Now that I’m not at work, I can wear it whenever and experiment with it in the comfort of my own home. Would I actually wear aqua eyeliner at work? Def not. But it does make me feel good and actually kind of cool.”
Gina Vaynshteyn是住在洛杉矶的编辑和作家。您可以在精炼厂29，公寓疗法，Hellogiggles，分散注意力等方面找到更多她的话。如果你想，你可以跟随她Instagram或者推特。
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