Gloria Steinem Hates Lipstick But Made A Lip Balm To Benefit Incarcerated Women

Gloria Steinem, wearing ‘In the Clear’ Image by Courtesy of Anna Fleis

By Jenny Singer August 21, 2018

“I never wear lipstick,” Gloria Steinem told Vogue. “But I can support a lip balm.”

Steinem is a human rights icon, a celebrated writer, and a living hero of history. She also happens to be a paragon of gorgeous style. What’s a girl to do?

In Steinem’s case, the answer is a genius workaround — she partnered with Lipstick Lobby to create a sheer, chicly-packaged balm for which 100% of profits will go to a non-profit organization that helps incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. “In the Clear,” the vitamin E-based nourishing lip treatment Steinem developed with social-justice beauty company Lipstick Lobby, will retail for $19. All of the net profits from “In The Clear” will go to the UnPrison Project — a non-profit created by Deborah Jiang-Stein which works to provide incarcerated women — particularly mothers — with the skills and empowerment they will need for life after prison and to avoid re-incarceration. The program, which teaches skills like literacy and career-preparedness, has reached over 20,000 women in US prisons. That’s 10% of all women in American prisons.

“Corporations are making money from prisons that charge as much per prisoner as it would take to send a student to Harvard, even though these offenses are minor,” Steinem told Vogue, calling the US prison system a “scandal and shame.”

But there’s no shame in marrying retail therapy and justice work — unlike when other companies offer a tiny fraction of sale profits to a cause, Lipstick Lobby really will give all net profits directly to the UnPrison Project. Like Gloria says: that’s a lip balm we can support.

Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

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