Top models Bianca Balti, Lara Stone, Liya Kebede and actor Blake Lively showcase L'Oreal Paris Color Riche Christmas 2015 lip color. Kenneth Willardt captures the ensemble in womanly makeup drama by Charlotte Willer and Stephane Lancien on hair.

Lipstick encourages women to explore different aspects of our personalities, while paying attention to skin pigmentation and hair color as factors that work together in creating personal beauty looks.

Does Red Lipstick Rule?

Research suggests that wearing rouge lipstick really does make women feel more confident. The color red is associated with warmth and sensual heat, positive energy and motivation. Red triggers feelings of ambition in women., leading Madeleine Marsh, author of 'Compacts and Cosmetics' to write that red lipstick "is in fact more than anything else about female strength."

A small 2012 study in France found that waitresses who wore lipstick got higher tips fro men, but not women. Tipping is not encouraged in France, where the service fee is built into the check already. Women wearing red lipstick in bars as said to get more stares from men.

Whether the stare is positive or negative -- or positively judgmental in an 'I can bed her' sort of way remains to be seen. AOC has written about research that women, too, have red preferences -- at least for men in red shirts.

Not for Coco Chanel

The French style icon Coco Chanel complained that red lipstick, along with red nail polish, was vulgar. Chanel routinely complained that house guests left stains on her glassware and table linens.

America's second wave of feminism in the 70s embraced a no makeup look. But first wave suffragettes embraced red lipstick as a symbol of rebellion in a contemporary 'slutwalk' sort of way.

The deeper we dig on the topic of lipstick, the more we are reminded of its symbolic place in women's history. It's time to revisit our red research at AOC for a Women's News update.