You've Got Lipstick on your Chin

Sign up to receive unique essays, articles, and letters that I haven’t shared anywhere else. You’ll also get sneak peeks of my current projects and advance notice about events and initiatives where I’d appreciate your support.

National

English

Newsletter (Digital)

Outlet metrics

Domain Authority

Ranking

Global

N/A

Country

N/A

Articles

Writers, Please Talk Your Shit

3 weeks ago | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi

I went to AWP - the Authors and Writers Conference - for the first time this year after years of studiously avoiding it. I am an introvert and grew up in literary circles in NYC, so going out of my way to meet people who often want parasocial gossip on my real-life friends or exes has always seemed strange.
Crypto-Farm Spas and Gigolo Seals: An Honest Review of Global Spas

1 month ago | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi

I love going to spas and consider spa culture part of my cultural inheritance as an Asian, even if spa culture can often feel unwelcoming as a nonbinary person. I’ve written about spas a few times over the years assessing both angles – this piece for ALLURE on unwelcoming spa culture and this piece for REAL LIFE on how oftentimes spa culture is hand in hand with imperial statecraft; that is to say, beauty and war are historically often intertwined.
Banking on Capturing Youth Will Eventually Bankrupt You

2 months ago | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi

Recently a PR email landed in my inbox that I wasn’t sure was actually real or not: Neutrogena’s Collagen Bank. I have gotten plenty of much more bizarre beauty emails, to be honest, but the cringe perfection of such a product name felt so on-the-nose on society’s fixation with forever youth that I was initially hoping it was made up. It also felt so perfectly timed with a project I’ve been working on for months myself - a response to this very engine of the fear of growing older.
"Functional" Fragrance is Ancient, and Political

2 months ago | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi |Ochuko Akpovbovbo

The very cool writer was riffing on functional fragrance in her newsletter recently and the fact some new woo-woo wellness brands are trying to position the term “functional” fragrance as a new thing. I wanted to explain why this isn’t new at length - for Ochuko, whose newsletter I adore, but also for all of you who are not up the nose of smell culture the way I am.
How to Know Smell: After Rain

2 months ago | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi

This is an audio component of the series I’m running on this newsletter called How to Know Smell. The first one is below:Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to You've Got Lipstick on Your Chin to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A beauty industry newsletter that publishes news, beauty criticism, and longform essays. Beauty is terror, but it can be care, too. I walk the line between these landscapes.
What to Bring When You Leave Everything Behind

Jan 13, 2025 | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi

I woke up and immediately understood the earth was dying faster on Wednesday. The sky was orange, the sun red like a wound. It was long past sunrise, and the fog was all wrong. Not fog: smog. And the taste of the air; it was dusty, a kind of dust I remembered from being a child across the towers in New York City. Death dust. The kind that immolates things. Total obliteration. LA skies are so big; the sky is part of why I love this place.
Nose Training in 2025

Jan 7, 2025 | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi

Welcome to Capricorn season, the month of my birth. I hope you had a restful holiday break. Thank you to everyone who came to the Holiday Swap! (More about that here:If you’re not a paid subscriber, you can view the video as well on my Youtube channel, which I cross-uploaded it onto as a present. I’ll be sticking any additional video content I make on Substack for my paid subscribers, though. You've Got Lipstick on Your Chin is a reader-supported publication.
Committing Crimes for Healthcare: Objectively Hot

Dec 23, 2024 | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi

So: Luigi Mangione, the UnitedHealthcare CEO Alleged Assassin. He’s hot. Let’s talk about what that means in our conversations about beauty, power, and politics. Let’s also talk about the fact he’s not the first man with his motives in American History - he is simply the man America has spawned for 2024. First, essential companions: A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood, and You’re Laughing?
How to Pull Off a Perfume Swap

Dec 20, 2024 | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi

Hey friends. How is the end of the year feeling for you? I am absolutely wrecked, this year was so excruciatingly busy and I worked my ass off. But I am so glad that the last project I really tried to do was a perfume swap, because it really centered me in just the joy of why I love beauty: community. Sharing something we love because we love it, and hearing why people love it so much. Love is generative. I wasn’t even tired afterwards.
A Week of Fragrances + Fits

Dec 2, 2024 | arabellesicardi.substack.com | Arabelle Sicardi

I am knee deep in fragrance land - did you get a ticket to the perfume swap in December yet? - ALLURE did an article about swap culture and mentioned it. I’m having a lot of fun in my own little ecosystem linking things together and meeting people, in between screaming into my hands about the clown car that is American Democracy. At a certain point, one has to laugh and then really settle into knowing who their people are. There will be no come to Jesus compromises to be made anymore.