Lipstick sisterhood: Slovak women’s collective cosmetic rituals, bonding and cooperation

In her model of Female cosmetics coalitions, Camilla Power suggests that women through collective manipulation of cosmetics create strong ties of solidarity, reciprocity and cooperation amongst themselves. Power places the emergence of these cooperative alliances in the African Middle Stone Age and shows that her model has relevance among contemporary hunter-gatherers. Can we find evidence for such behaviour in contemporary industrial societies? Based on ethnographic research, this talk will show how bonding, cooperation and egalitarianism emerge as a result of collective ritual manipulation of cosmetics amongst women in Slovakia. It will also look at mechanisms through which the research participants maintained equal sharing of one of the things very much appreciated by men – their beauty