Woman's Hour - Red lipstick, Nigel Slater, Joan Smith and abortion in the US

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

Red is the best-selling lipstick colour on the market for most brands. Beauty journalist Rachel Felder, author of ‘Red Lipstick’ has explored the origins and history of red lipstick, looking at its association with film stars, the aristocracy, its sex appeal, its power and glamour. She joins Jenni to discuss why the colour has stuck around for centuries, along with Florence Adepoju the founder of a lipstick brand who studied how to make cosmetics at the London College of Fashion. .Alabama has become the latest US state to move to restrict abortions by passing a bill to outlaw the procedure in almost all cases. Earlier this year the governors of four other states - Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio - signed bills banning abortion if an embryonic heartbeat can be detected. Jenni speaks to National Public Radio’s correspondent, Sarah McCammon.Nigel Slater’s newest book Greenfeast: Spring, Summer is the first in a pair of season –led vegetable books. The second comes out in October for the autumn and winter months. Nigel discusses eating less meat and his collection of recipes for spring and summer vegetables.Jenni is joined by journalist and author, Joan Smith, to discuss her new book ‘Home Grown: how domestic violence turns men into terrorists’. She questions why, in the debate about what makes a terrorist, a striking common factor has long been overlooked - a history of domestic abuse.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Sarah McCammon Interviewed Guest: Nigel Slater Interviewed Guest: Joan Smith Interviewed Guest: Rachel Felder Interviewed Guest: Florence Adepoju

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 16th of May. Now, Nigel Slater's latest is Green Feast, the first of a pair of seasonal vegetarian cookery books, spring and summer now, autumn and winter later in the year, and a lemon meringue pie which features in his story Toast books Spring and Summer Now, Autumn and Winter Later in the Year, and A Lemon Meringue Pie, which features in his story Toast, and was, he says, the dish that changed everything.

Joan Smith, known for her book Misogynies, analyses homegrown terrorism, how domestic violence turns men into terrorists, and as red lipstick continues to be the best-selling colour, why has it been a beauty icon for centuries? As I'm sure you've heard in the news, abortion and the law is becoming one of the most hotly debated subjects in the United States. This week, Alabama has become the fifth state since January, effectively to ban termination of pregnancy. There are no exceptions, except when the life of the woman is at risk and any doctor found to have carried out the operation could face a prison sentence of 99 years. Why is it happening now?

And what might happen countrywide if the issue is put before the Supreme Court? Well, Sarah McGammon is National Public Radio's national correspondent and joined us from Virginia. Why is it happening now? Well, a lot of it has to do with a shifting political landscape in the US. And I want to apologize, I'm getting over a cold, but I'll do my best here this morning. President Trump, when he was campaigning, promised to choose Supreme Court justices who would oppose abortion rights. And he has done so. He's now appointed two justices to the Supreme Court, reshaping the balance of the court.

Activists have wanted to do this, anti-abortion rights activists have wanted to do this for a long time. And they really see an opportunity here. So they are trying to push through abortion restrictions in many states, hoping that one of these laws that previously would not have passed muster at the Supreme Court might now be upheld by this new court that includes these two Trump nominees. It's an issue that's been debated for years since Roe versus Wade in 1973, which legalized abortion nationwide. Who is leading the current moves? You know, there's really kind of a movement on both sides of the abortion issue and has been for a long time. Abortion rights opponents, this has been their goal really since 1973 when the Supreme Court decided the Roe v. Wade decision

that legalized abortion. And again, many now see an opportunity that they haven't seen in decades to either ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe or deeply reconsider the theory of Roe. At the same time, there's a tug of war over this issue. Advocates on the other side are also trying to pass abortion protections in state legislatures. But it's really being led by a number of groups, both national groups and some that have state chapters. Abortion is a really mobilizing issue on the right. Many religious conservatives oppose it here. And that's been true for a very long time. But again, they're seeing really what they see as a new opportunity to push this issue all the way to the Supreme Court. How united is the anti-abortion lobby in its aims?

I think the overarching goals are the same, to ban abortion to a much greater extent than is currently allowed in the U.S. And I should say that under Roe, basically Roe versus Wade in 1973, guaranteed a woman a right to an abortion nationwide. Prior to that, it was only legal in some states. It was sort of a state-by-state thing. And Roe essentially said, to deeply summarize, that the deeper you go into a pregnancy, the less right a state has to regulate. Or rather, the earlier in a pregnancy, the less right a state has to regulate abortion. So early on, pre-viability, which is a shifting goal. There are very few things a state is supposed to be able to say about it. After viability, it gets a little more complicated. And a lot of states have banned later abortions or restricted them heavily. But up until now, at least, any time

that a law deemed overly restrictive has passed a state, the Supreme Court has turned it back and said, you know, this doesn't line up with Roe. So to answer your bigger question, some abortion rights opponents would like to ban all abortions. There are many, and historically, most legislation, I would say, the argument has been to allow a few exceptions for rape, incest, life of the woman. But this Alabama law, what's so different about it is it does not have those exceptions other than the life of the woman who's pregnant. And I should make clear to your audience that none of these restrictive laws, this one in Alabama or the other four that get a lot of discussion that have passed in four other states this year, which ban abortion after a heartbeat can be detected. None of those are currently in effect in the US. And that's

something that advocates have stressed that women can still get an abortion in every state legally. But these laws are now in the books, and they're either going to be or are being litigated. Now, there is talk of the issue going before the Supreme Court. How likely is it to go that far? From the advocates I talk to really on both sides, it's unlikely that something like this Alabama law will make it to the Supreme Court. And that's because it is so restrictive, because it bans abortion at every stage of pregnancy except for the life of the woman, and because it doesn't include these exceptions. So what's more likely is that a somewhat less restrictive law will get there first. There are already something like 16 or 17, I'd have to double check the exact number, abortion-related laws a step or two away

from the Supreme Court, advocates tell me. Some of those are what are known sort of in the jargon as TRAP laws, which is an acronym I don't remember at the moment, but basically these are rules that a lot of states have passed to try to not necessarily ban abortion at a certain stage, but to deeply restrict and regulate the procedure. So that might mean setting regulations for how wide a clinic hallways must be to allow abortions to be performed or requiring doctors who perform abortions to have hospital admitting privileges. These are things that a lot of people in the medical community say aren't necessary, that abortion is a relatively safe procedure compared to a lot of other procedures, and that they're being regulated out of line with the level of risk. Advocates say they want to protect women, or abortion opponents say they want to pass these laws to protect women's health. But abortion rights supporters say that it's really just about getting in the way of access. And the Supreme Court a couple of years ago in 2016 actually looked at a law like this from Texas, the state of Texas, and said essentially that that this is too cumbersome.

You can't pass these health regulations unless there's a clear public health benefit. But there are other laws like that, specifically one from Louisiana, that is very close to the Supreme Court, that the Supreme Court is expected to look at soon. And so what that could do is create an opportunity for the court to incrementally erode the Roe precedent rather than doing it wholesale. What plans do other states than the seven we already know are involved have? Well, there has been so much legislation on the abortion issue this year, really sparked by the confirmation of this most recent Supreme Court nominee from President Trump, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In the U.S., most generally legislative sessions start around the beginning of the year, and they tend to wrap up around this time or a little bit later. So there has been, in recent months, a whole lot of legislation on abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, which is a data-keeping organization that supports abortion rights here in the U.S., says that there's been something like a 63% increase in

states that have proposed what advocates for these laws call heartbeat bans, what opponents call six-week bans. Again, these are the laws that would ban abortion as soon as a heartbeat can be found, around six weeks or so women or many women know that they are pregnant. It's been a 63% increase in those. And so many states are looking at this issue. How effective and widespread is the pro-choice lobby? It really depends on the state. This is one of those things you hear in the US talked about a lot as a red state,

blue state issue. So we've seen a few blue states or more liberal leaning states this year pass or at least consider abortion protections to put deeper protections for abortion into state law, the state constitution, for example. But in more conservative states, especially in the Midwest and South, we are seeing a whole lot of these restrictive bans. Most of these six-week bans that I referenced have been passed by Midwestern and Southern states. And what advocates for abortion rights say is that if Roe versus Wade is overturned or deeply weakened, what is likely to happen is that women will really only have access depending on where they live. It'll be a very patchwork system. Sarah McCammon, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning.

And we will stay in touch with you, of course, to see how this develops. Now, Nigel Slater is one of our best known cookery writers. He appears in The Observer every week, makes lots of television programmes where he cooks in his own kitchen, and a play based on his autobiography Toast is in London at the Other Place Theatre. Well, knowing the range of recipes he's presented in the past, it comes as a little bit of a surprise that his latest books are a pair of seasonal vegetarian cookery books. Green Feast, out now, covers spring and summer, and the second, covering autumn and winter, will be published later in the year. Nigel, why a vegetarian cookery book right now?

Well, I've always written about what I eat. And I keep little books that document everything I eat. And I don't honestly know why I still write them, but I do every night. I have these little notes of everything I've eaten. Why did you start doing it? I honestly don't know. And the very early ones have been lost,

but I've still got most of my diaries. And it's something that has now become a habit. When I look back over them, to see what I was eating four years ago or five years ago, I noticed that there is a shift in what I'm eating. And it's not a conscious shift. I haven't said, you know, I didn't wake up and say, I'm only going to eat vegetables for the next 12 months. It was a gradual thing. And I've been noticing it and thinking, well, I've always written about what I eat. So I'm going to do a little book of recipes without meat. There is a question on the cover of the new book. What vegetables shall I eat today? So Nigel Slater, what vegetable shall you eat today?

Oh, I think it's going to be asparagus. When I was a kid, asparagus was so special and very expensive. And now it really isn't. It's almost the same price as a bag of peas. And it's very seasonal. And I want to celebrate the seasons of the vegetables as they sort of come in and out of season. So it would be that. But then again, it could also be a bag of frozen peas,

you know, Jenny. But having decided on asparagus, I'm sure you'll do asparagus and not a bag of frozen peas. How would you cook your asparagus? What's the best way of doing it? There's some debate in my family as to whether you boil it very lightly or whether you fry it.

I think if you're going to whether you boil it very lightly or whether you fry it? I think if you're going to eat it as it is, asparagus with some melted butter or something like that, then I would steam it. I cook it in shallow boiling water with the lid on so that the tips steam. But I cook it in many other ways too. And I like chopping it up into short lengths and cooking it in olive oil with a little bit of lemon juice and then to make it into a meal I would fold in some grain, some couscous, maybe a little bit of pasta, something like that, a little bit more lemon juice and then some fresh herbs, some mint and parsley, so that you get the fragrance of them. So you've actually got this lovely, fresh, green vegetable,

but you're also getting quite a substantial meal from the grain. So from the new book, what vegetarian dishes that are in there would you really love to eat? Well, you know, I love to eat simple food. I've never been a great fan of fussy cooking. I like things I can put together quickly. And a great joy for me is to be able to take a vegetable and to cook it as simply as possible. So, for instance, I would take courgettes, slice them and cook them with a little bit of olive oil and some mint and you're very fond of

mint i'm very fond of mint because i like fresh tastes i like clean fresh tastes um it could be parsley and then i would um almost tip it over a little pile of soft ricotta cheese and the cheese melts slowly into the vegetables. And yes, I would put a bit of lemon zest on there. I'd maybe put a few seeds, very fond of things like sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, so that I get that crunch with the softness of the cheese. Now, the new books are seasonal. Why is it really important for you to eat what's in season?

Because a bag of frozen peas, frankly, is not necessarily in season, is it? No. Well, it's always in my deep freeze. I've got to be honest. They're jolly useful. It's about celebrating what is at its best. And I really do think that every meal is a celebration. If I think of what my mum and dad ate, it's so different from what I eat now. I can see my mum slicing runner beans all the way through the summer. And we never had them in the winter because they simply weren't there.

They weren't imported. I like to stick to that seasonality. The very best vegetables at the best time of year. But, I mean, we know your mother was not a great cook you've been very open about that what vegetables mainly featured in your childhood well i up until i was probably in my teens the only acceptable vegetable were peas um i everything else was forced upon me um we used to have those little mixed carrots and sweet corn and beans. I would eat those. But I was like a lot of kids.

But because I was, I suppose, rather indulged as a child, I was never made to eat anything I didn't want. There had to be roast potatoes, Jenny. And there still does, actually, on a Sunday. They're the best vegetables in the world. And I think there's meat on a Sunday as well. There is, absolutely. I mean, I've always eaten a mixed diet.

Yes, there has been a little bit of development, a little bit of slow movement towards less meat, particularly during the week. But yes, I do eat meat. You know, the day I die, they'll be forcing a bacon sandwich out of my hand. I'm not going to go quietly. I've always loved meat. But I like vegetables too. What sort of quantities of food do you find? We're both getting older, you know, and do you find as you get older, you don't eat quite so much? I don't eat as much, but I eat different things.

I was thinking today about if my mum walked into a supermarket now, she would have so many more toys to play with. There are so many things to eat that I didn't have as a child in the 1960s and 70s. And I find that I want to eat a more varied diet, lots more ingredients, but actually a smaller amount of them. I no longer eat those big piled plates of pasta with cheese sauce running down it. I just, I find I don't really want to do that. Now, as I said, the book that's out today is for spring and summer. The later one will be autumn and winter. What's the essential difference in the relationship between protein and carbohydrate when you're cooking for spring and summer as opposed to cooking for autumn and winter?

I find the food, because I'm writing the autumn and winter book at the moment, and I've suddenly realised how much more carbohydrate there is. It's a book of recipes that are very much about keeping us warm, keeping us satisfied, the end of a long day when you come home and you're cold and wet. And it's about the comfort of food. The spring and summer book, yes, the dishes are lighter. In fact, I would suggest that you put several dishes together and put them on the table all at once. So a little bit of rice, a little bit of pasta, a salad. And then because it's really

written, I suppose, for omnivores, it's for the days that those of us who eat everything don't want to eat meat. But in fact, I don't worry too much about the balance side of it and the protein and the carbs. I leave that to the experts. Now, I've managed to not mention the lemon meringue pie so far but I know there is one sitting in a box.

There are some little ones. Oh, little ones. Baby ones. Not difficult to eat ones then. But what was it about the lemon meringue pie that made you say it was the dish that made all the difference? I'd cooked with my mum secretly behind my father's back. And we made jam tarts. And then when my mum died and my father remarried, and the woman he remarried was a wonderful cook. And she made lemon meringue pie.

And to a little boy from Wolverhampton, the idea that a tart could be crisp and soft, it could be sour and sweet, it could be everything I wanted food to be, it felt so exotic, so unusual. And I decided it would be great fun in the Playtoast to pass those little M&M pies amongst the audience Well Nigel Slater you never

disappoint I just had a little bite, it's crisp and it's sour and it's sweet and it's perfect and thank you very much for joining us today and good luck with the new books. Thank you. And now of course I can't speak

because I've still got the taste of the lemon on my tongue. Thank you. Still to come in today's programme, Homegrown How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists, a new book by Joan Smith and Red Lipstick Why Has It Come Back Into Fashion

and is seen as a beauty icon now this week on late night woman's hour Emma Barnett is talking about grief one of her guests the writer Ambreen Razia found her mother's death particularly painful earlier this year my mum she was an addict so because she was an alcoholic I've got friends who are ex-addicts as well and one of them in particular gave me I was feeling overwhelming sense of guilt that's something that comes with grief it just you just feel guilty that you just didn't serve them in their last days and a friend of mine said to me that you shouldn't feel apologetic that person wants to apologize to you you know and suddenly like all this guilt that I was feeling just disappeared was her death if you don't mind me asking linked

to the outcome yes yeah it was um and I was I it just you know instead of the how are you and how are you feeling and it was a harsh truth it's basically saying your mum really wants to apologize to you from the grave and it was it sounds very harsh but actually it just disintegrated all the guilt that I was feeling and you can hear more from late night women's hour by subscribing to the podcast on BBC sound of course now Joan Smith is a novelist a journalist chair of the mayor of London's violence against women and girls board and is probably On BBC Sounds, of course. Now, Joan Smith is a novelist, a journalist, chair of the Mayor of London's Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is probably best known for her book Misogynies,

inspired by the response to Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed, of course, the Yorkshire Ripper. Well, she's now published a book called Homegrown, How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists. Joan, what prompted this theory that domestic violence and terrorism are linked? Noticing how many terrorists have a background of abusing family members. And I started doing some research on it. And it has been researched in the United States, not in relation so much to terrorism, but to mass murderers.

So there is good research in the States looking at mass shootings. And I think the best known piece of research suggests that a family member and an intimate partner is included in about 60% of those. And they quite often start with a wife or a partner or indeed a mother being killed before they erupt onto the streets and start attacking strangers. I started noticing the same thing in relation to terrorists. So in 2016, when Mohamed Lawesh Boulal drove a truck onto the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, which was a horrific attack, and he killed 86 people and injured about 500. He had been an abuser in his own family for years, and he'd abused his wife,

his children, his mother-in-law. In 2017, when we had four fatal attacks in London and Manchester, I noticed that all of the attacks were carried out by men who had this history. And because I sit on lots of committees at City Hall and I meet the police regularly, I raised it, and a very senior officer said to me, I've been sitting in meetings talking about terrorism with experts for about 20 years and nobody's ever mentioned this before. So he went back to Scotland Yard and they have a database of convicted terrorists and also the ones who've killed themselves. And it's several hundred people. And he went back and said, what data do we have?

And the answer was, we don't have it because nobody has ever asked the question before. That's very worrying though, isn't it? Nobody's even asked the question before. It is. But though, isn't it? That nobody's even asked the question before. It is, but I mean, people are, it's not just me, other people are beginning to ask the question, but I think it's because people think of terrorism as not really like the other male violence. That's why I wrote the book.

I wanted to say that violent men are violent men, whether they're right-wing extremists or whether they're Islamists or whatever they claim to be their motivation. Underlying that is how violent they are. But you know, clearly not every man who commits domestic violence becomes a terrorist. What do you suppose prompts those who do to adopt a political or religious ideology for which they are prepared to kill? That's true. Most men who abuse women aren't going to become terrorists. But I think that there's a cohort of men who already actually enjoy violence. And, you know, they're living

in an atmosphere in the home where there's a lot of anxiety, fear. They live with distressed and upset people. They're actually injuring their own families, the people they're supposed to love. And then they encounter an ideology which says, yes, that's fine. You know, you have a grievance, you have reason to be angry with the world. One of the things I noticed when I was doing the research, because I had to base it on, you know, publicly available material, is how many of these men actually carried out an attack after their wife or their partner had thrown them out. So Darren Osborne, who is the right-wing extremist who drove a van into worshippers coming outside a mosque in Finsbury Park in 2017,

he had shown no interest in politics at all. He was a career criminal. He had over 100 criminal convictions, including one for actual bodily harm on his partner. Six weeks before that, she actually threw him out and he was living rough for a time. And suddenly, he started ranting in pubs about how he wanted to kill Muslims. The same is true as Mohamed Mlawesh Bulel, who I just mentioned, that his wife finally managed to get him out of their apartment. And I think there's something about these men,

you know, the rejection is such a wound to their vanity. And suddenly this identity is dangled before them. You can become a warrior, whether it's neo-Nazi or Islamist. There are, of course, some women who indulge in domestic violence and some who become terrorists. Would you make a similar connection there? There's one case in the book. I mean, most of the instances I looked at in the book are men becoming terrorists. There's one particularly awful case which got a lot of publicity last year where a mother and her daughters were sent to prison for preparing acts of terrorism in London. And it's a very famous case because it looked as if they were preparing some kind of attack on the British Museum.

And in that case, the mother had actually abused her daughters when they were teenagers. And one of these girls actually ran away from home and called Childline. You know, the girls were sending out signals that something was very amiss in the home. And I think those signals on the whole were missed. And in the end, the younger daughter, who was only 17, she was groomed online by a British jihadist who was in Raqqa, I think, in Syria. And he was basically kind of trying to persuade women to go and join Islamic State. And he promised her marriage and they went through an online marriage ceremony and all this kind of thing. So you can see that in that case, you know, women do sometimes do this, but the girls are very, very vulnerable to that kind of message. You write a lot in the book about ACE, Adverse Childhood Experiences, where a child may

have grown up with domestic violence. What impact might that have on a youngster maybe being drawn into a gang or a radical, possibly terrorist organisation? Yes, I mean, I talked to a small number of experts when I was doing the book and doing the research, and the police now in London and other police forces are very, very conscious of the impact of adverse childhood experiences, and they see it in boys getting involved in gangs because a gang is a kind of alternative family. But it also, you know, we know the effects on children.

One of the effects on boys, if they're growing up in a household where there is a lot of violence, they tend at first to reject it. They tend later on to start identifying with the abuser because it's just out of self-preservation. And there's some research from the States looking at the brain, comparing the brains of children who have grown up with abuse, children who haven't, and combat veterans. And the boys who have grown up with abuse,

they have the same response to violent images as combat veterans. And that makes them something called hypervigilant. And hypervigilant individuals live in a state of very high arousal where they see threats coming at them from all, you know, things that you or I would not be frightened by, they are. It's still a massive leap from beating up a partner, whether a male or a female one, to committing mass murder. What makes that leap happen?

Well, I think it is think it's more about identity. It's about men identifying with this kind of violence. And one of the cases I write about in the book is the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris. And the two young men who carried out those murders, I mean, they were in their early 30s. They had gone through the care system. Their father had been violent, he died, their mother had put them into care because she couldn't cope. They'd grown up miles away from Paris. They were angry young men. And, you know, at the age of 20, they returned to

Paris, they go to a mosque where they're radicalized. And their sister said they were very, they were very racist. They hated everybody who wasn't a Muslim. And, you know, from a very early stage, they actually wanted to commit anti-Semitic attacks. And in the end, they attacked, you know, a newspaper in Paris. But what you can see is there's a kind of incredible rage and anger there, which is looking for an outlet. The other point I'd make is that a lot of these men are suicidal. They're really, really self-hating.

They've got themselves into a state where their lives are so consumed by hatred that they actually need an outlet. How has your theory been received by the police, the intelligence agencies, who you said hadn't really looked at it before? Well, the senior police officer I first spoke to about this, he came back to me and said, you know, I went back to the yard and I asked what data we have and we don't have it. And he said, but, you know, intellectually, we think you're right. Now, David Anderson QC, who was the independent was the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, I heard him being

interviewed a few weeks ago. And he said that it's beginning to look as though the right wing extremists as though they do have this background of domestic abuse. So I've looked at those, but I've also looked at the Islamists and it's coming up. I mean, it's really fascinating. It's horrible, but it's fascinating. So the man who committed the Westminster Bridge attack, the Darren Osborne, the Finsbury Park attacker, the Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, and two out of three of the London Bridge attackers all had this background of a history of beating up women. And I think the thing is that male violence doesn't stay in neat categories.

So, you know, we know that rape often occurs in a context of domestic violence. And I think the mistake is to separate these men off and think that they're completely unrelated to other men who commit violent acts of one sort or another. Joan Smith, thank you very much indeed for being with us. Now, I'm sure that choices about hair and makeup as we grow up are deeply influenced by our mothers. Mine never wore eye makeup. She had specks from being tiny and didn't think it was any use to her. I always wear eye makeup. She never left the house without red lipstick, even to pop to the local shops. I have never worn lipstick in my life. It's a kind of defiance, I suppose. But my mother was

on trend no matter what period she had lived through because red is the best-selling colour and has been for centuries. Flo is the founder of the fashion brand MDM Flo and has been cooking up red lipstick in the studio and still is. Rachel Felder is the author of Red Lipstick, an ode to a beauty icon. Rachel, why such a passion for red lipstick? People in general or me personally? You personally. Well, when I was a teenager and I started wearing lipstick, the look at the time was muted and nude

and you were supposed to look like you had just come off a beach and you were supposed to have narrow, quiet lips and be sort of quiet in general. And none of those things applied to me. And I was very into English punk rock music. And I would see people like Suzy Sue from Suzy and the Banshees, and that's who I wanted to be. And I think for a lot of young women, they start wearing red lipstick in a similar way. They see someone iconic to them, like Madonna, for example, and it makes them feel like they can do it. And today we live in a beautifully inclusive world,

but then it wasn't so inclusive. And I decided instead of feeling bad about my full, bold lips and personality, I would own it. And I was able to do that with the red lipstick. So Flo, what are you up to at the cooker? So I'm currently melting down the base and simultaneously mixing together a few different red pigments to make your perfect red. What is the base?

So the base is a blend of oils and waxes. In the base that I made this morning, it's got castor oil in there, beeswax, carnauba wax. So very natural waxes to give a quite creamy formula. And how different are the reds that you could put into it because that's the problem isn't it deciding on the right shade yeah there's an endless amount like because you can mix together different red pigments you can mix red with other pigments so a lot of people like blue toned um red lipsticks or you can create yellow base or you can make it more orange so yeah it's literally limitless red lips rachel go back a very long way what was used before lipstick was invented let's say cleopatra queen elizabeth i

so so lipstick modern lipstick in a stick was invented in 1884. But women have been coloring their lips red for centuries and centuries. So Cleopatra, for example, ground up beetles to make a quite bluish red. And it was very expensive to do that because you needed thousands of beetles. And her subjects also reddened their lips, but they used a sort of, their lip coloring came from red ochre, which has a quite rust tone. So her red lipstick denoted power, affluence, and the ability to be able to afford that lip coloring versus something else. And Queen Elizabeth I? Yes, Queen Elizabeth I. She used ceruse, which was heavily lead-based, and she was obsessed with reddening her lips. And of course, with her coloring, it looked rather spectacular.

And the red lipstick, the red lip coloring, she felt would ward off the devil. So she wore it every day quite religiously. And when she died, there was such a thick layer of red on her lips. It was caked on. They couldn't get it off. And what were the first red lipsticks, the 19th century ones, actually like? Oh, well, the first one was invented by Guerlain in 1884. It was called N'Moublie Pas, Do Not Forget Me.

And it was wrapped in silk, but it did resemble a lipstick that we use today. semiotic ramifications of red lipstick being something elusive and mysterious, it took that out into the open. Because before lipstick was physically in a tube, you applied it in your boudoir. It was this very seductive, quiet thing, secret thing. And then in 1915, a more conventional metal tube was invented by morris levy but that was a push-up and then in 1922 james bruce mason invented what we would know is lipstick today and and that's traditionally called the bullet and he had fought in world war one so he was in the shape was inspired by world war one bullets now flo i know that you've got a liquid that's going around uh and being mixed up but i noticed when i came over to look at the oven that you do have sticks how do you this is

probably a really stupid question how do you get the stuff that you've made on the stove yeah into the tube so i have a mold system which is steel based um and then it's got like silicon cups in it so i pour the like molten mixture of the base and the pigment into the molds it dries within what kind of cools um more so than dries um within the silicon cup system. And then after it's cooled and the mixture is solid, essentially squeeze it out of the silicon cup and squeeze it into the base. What made you decide this was what you wanted to do? So my background's always been scientific. Growing up, I thought the only kind of role in science there was, was medicine.

I was working on a makeup counter and in that process fell in love with the beauty industry and thought, what is the most scientific role within the beauty industry? Did a Google and found this incredible thing called cosmetic science, which is quite similar to pharmacy but instead of making medicine you're making cosmetics so applied to the line of kosher fashion did the cosmetic science degree for four years and then immediately went into mixing my own formulas now the lipstick you've got on just looks perfect on your skin type the shape of your mouth, everything. How do you decide which one is the best for you? I think it's a really personal thing. Like, there's a lot of people who would disagree

and think that there is a science to what works, but I think when you wear a colour that you personally have an affinity to, you have a confidence that makes the look come together as opposed to someone else um prescribing especially when it comes to bright um lipsticks especially reds it is about you being confident and you personally loving the color that you're wearing then there's obviously other tips and tricks you can do so like i've got a lip liner on um which helps kind of um give my

lip a certain shape and i think better suits the shape of my face as opposed to the color what is the color that you've got on there so i've got a supreme red lipstick but with red lipsticks there's not you can't really different colors have different names across different brands so there isn't really a universal name for colors as well so this is i it me, it's a supreme. But to another brand, they recognise it as another term. Different women go for different types, it seems to me, Rachel. Let's go through Marilyn Monroe.

How did she make a decision about what she wore? Oh, she was obsessed with red lipstick. She kind of always wore red lipstick. I'd like to add something to what Flo said. I tell all women to have a wardrobe of red lipsticks. And I personally cocktail a lot. People always ask me what red lipstick I wear. And I skirt that answer typically, because in my journalistic beauty writing life, I don't like to endorse things. But the truth is, I have a wardrobe and I cocktail. So Marilyn Monroe, to answer your question properly,

wore a Max Factor red that she loved, and it was created for her. And of course, she was in an era when movie stars wore red. Elizabeth Taylor, who's also featured in my book, always wore red. And for some years, she had a rule on set that she could be the only person on the set who wore the red lipstick, no one else. Our Queen wears red lipstick from time to time. Wonderful Queen Elizabeth II is a huge lipstick lover in general. But on her coronation, which was a big deal because it was the first coronation that was broadcast on television, she commissioned a red lipstick to match her ceremonial gowns, quite a burgundy-ish deep red. And she dubbed it literally Balmoral Red because of her wonderful country estate. And when I was working on the book, I tried to get the three brands that had been kind of anecdotally credited with creating this

lipstick. I tried to get confirmation of that. And none of them could confirm it. Some of them just didn't have the records anymore. That's part of the tragedy that some brands don't prioritize the archives. So nobody could confirm it. So me and my American accent called Buckingham Palace. And they really didn't want to confirm it. And I think thought I was a rather eccentric and pushy American. How easy would you say, Flo, it is to make your own at home? And how is this one coming along?

Yeah, I think it's coming along quite nicely um it's quite a deep red um in terms of making at home without the scientific background it's quite difficult to create it in the way that i am in terms of like creating a custom base but you can quite easily like melt down um lipsticks that you already have like different reds perhaps like part used and then make your own kind of custom shade out of that but i wouldn't like recommend getting a whole chemistry kit might be a bit messy yeah very red in the kitchen just just one other thing uh rachel why is lipstick red often, so associated with making women feel good? In secret in Afghanistan during the Taliban, given to women survivors in concentration camps. What is it about?

The second the camps were liberated, there was a camp in Germany that the British Red Cross brought in cartons of red lipstick as they liberated the camp. It makes people, it makes women feel strong. It makes them feel more beautiful. It makes them feel put together. It makes them feel empowered. It gives off a confidence. One of the people I interviewed for the book was Paloma Picasso, who had her own great red lipstick at one point. And she told me that she was actually quite shy and she wore it because when she put it on, people assumed she was confident. And yes, I never leave the house without it when I walk the dog, when I go to the gym and people think I'm, you know, pulled together

and I took a minute to put on my makeup when I literally can put it on in the dark with my eyes closed. I was talking to Rachel Felder and Flo. Lots of response from you on the question of America and abortion. Bev said, America has always protected the foetus more than the mother. It's historical. Richard said, just listening to Women's Hour

on developments in abortion laws in the US, it strikes me they're going back to how it was in Ireland. Stand by for right to travel and right to information cases to be brought before the courts in the near future. Nigel Slater was popular as always. Patricia said, there's something special about spring and summer food. I get much more adventurous, so I'll be getting your book for new inspirations.

Good luck. Bev said, oh, it's like listening to a bedtime storyteller. Lindsay said, Jenny's pure joy at the little lemon meringue pie has warmed my heart. This morning did mine too. And then Joan Smith and domestic violence and terrorism. Kirsten said, it seems that when some violent men have nothing left to lose, in other words, they've already driven the women who love them away, they will

risk anything as though they're looking for the next fight. Adrian said, what a brilliant interview with Joan Smith. Truly insightful. This should be the context within which you build any future discussion of violence, especially of a gendered variety. Jane said domestic violence, it's still terrorism. Mostly men terrorise women and often children. It does have the same roots, a hatred of the other and difference. Fiona said, Ten years ago, I did commissioned research into children affected by domestic violence in one area and accidentally discovered that many kids with ASBOs had witnessed domestic violence.

The domestic violence coordinator told me she believed all these kids had, though there were no official statistics. There were a few children convicted of serious violent offences and all of them were known to children's services and had lived with adult domestic violence. The narratives of youth crime and child perpetrators overshadow histories as unsupported victims of domestic violence. Joe said,

I believe we have a chance to address this with better care for vulnerable children Joe said, And Jane said, Looking forward to reading this. Read Misogynies in 1989, which really helped my understanding of myself as a woman. And then we came to lipstick. Aira said, I just can't wear red lipstick. Whatever I do, I look somewhere between a hooker and a man in drag.

Recovering from ME said, surely it says more about the male concept of what women should look like and what makes a woman feel good than what the survivors of concentration camps were interested in. Can't think of anything I would want less after being starved, abused and brutalised. Denise said Theresa May wears blood red lipstick. Perhaps she could start a new brand, Vampire Red. Kim said red lipstick and red nails, sometimes the classics are the best. Verity Scott said, I love my red lipsticks. It makes me feel sexy and classically beautiful.

My mother once told me I looked like a slut while wearing it. I told this story to a geisha in Japan, and she laughed at my mother's ignorance at how only strong women have red lips. Now, tomorrow, Jane will be joined by the deputy editor of the New Statesman, Helen Lewis, the neuroscientist, Professor Sophie Scott, to discuss the news stories of the week that we might not have looked at. They'll be talking about the cancellation of the Jeremy Kyle show, James Brokenshire's Four Ovens,

and why Sansa Stark should win Game of Thrones. That's tomorrow with Jane, two minutes past ten, if you can make it. Bye-bye. Every week on Desert Island Discs, I have the delicious task of dispatching my guests to a mythical desert island

with their choice of eight tracks, a book and a luxury. This week, it's documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux. His music is fabulous, but if you listen, you'll also find out how he tried to impress Michael Moore, why a series of Enid Blyton's books changed his life and how he de-stresses in the kitchen. There's even a bit of rapping thrown in for good measure. Don't miss it. Just subscribe to Desert Island Discs on BBC Sounds.

I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.