Ever tried a blush called \u2018Orgasm’? Or a mascara that struts its stuff with the moniker, \u2018Better than Sex’? Or, simply, \u2018Climax’?\u00a0<\/p>\n
No, this is not a beauty column. Nor am I trying to, er, get you in the mood by flashing raunchy words at you. Truth is, I have only just stumbled on to the jaw-dropping fact that these days many cosmetic products bear hyper-sexualised names\u2014the more explicit the better. It’s all very cool. Or hot, if you will.<\/p>\n
The cosmetic brand NARS has a mascara called \u2018Climax’ and a range of blushes with names such as \u2018Deep Throat’, \u2018Multiple Orgasm’, \u2018Super Orgasm’, \u2018Threesome’, \u2018Torrid’, \u2018Aroused’, \u2018Peep Show’\u2014you get the drift. The entire blush collection is called, what else, \u2018Orgasm’. \u201cHave more than one,\u201d advises its tagline.<\/p>\n
Charlotte Tilbury, an ultra-luxe brand, is not far behind. Its liquid highlighter, \u2018Glowgasm Beauty Light Wand’, comes in shades like \u2018Pinkgasm’, \u2018Goldgasm’ and \u2018Peachgasm’, just so you don’t miss the multiple ‘gasms’ it brings to the table. Its lip colour range is a decidedly modest \u2018Pillow Talk’, but it does have shades with names such as \u2018Lost Cherry’ (Google, if you don’t know your slang!)\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then there is the brand Too Faced\u2014all in-your-face and unabashed. It boldly, and baldly, calls its mascara, \u2018Better Than Sex’. Not risqu\u00e9 enough? Well, you could also go for the’ Too Faced Lip Injection Liquid Lipstick’ in shades like \u2018It’s So Big’, or, \u2018Large and in Charge’. Its Melted Matte Liquid Lipstick takes the naughty name game a shade higher: \u2018Suck It’, it instructs helpfully. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now you may tell me that I’ve been living under a rock and cosmetics with sexually suggestive names have been around for some time. And you would be right. Full disclosure: My knowledge of cosmetics and their brands had thus far been limited to one or two trusted names. Never adventurous with makeup, I have misspent my youth, sticking to the boring trio of compact-lipstick-kajal, vaguely aware that there was an explosion of products out there which could give me a glam look, but never having the patience to trawl through the staggering array of primers, concealers, blushes, bronzers, mascaras, and what have you. The sheer number of choices and the time it would take to make an informed one, scared me off.<\/p>\n
But all that changed recently. Thanks to a spate of weddings in the family, I wondered suddenly if I could give myself a spiffy makeover with some well-chosen beauty aids. And so it was that I boldly went where I had never gone before. That is to say, I ventured into an online cosmetics shopping site. It was like going down a rabbit hole, and I spent several agonising hours trying to decide if I should buy this or that, and more crucially, buy which from what international brand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, hey, I emerged wiser from the experience. Apart from expanding the horizon of my knowledge, and learning about the huge number of cosmetic brands available to the Indian consumer today, I also came upon the eye-popping trend of beauty products being marketed with frankly sexual names.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To be sure, the entire beauty industry, chiefly targeted at women, perpetuates and feeds on the social pressure on them to look young and beautiful and, therefore, attractive to the opposite sex. It is part of the larger societal process of the incessant sexualisation of women, be it in language, culture or the mass media. However, when a beauty brand pitches a cosmetic with a name like \u2018Orgasm’ or \u2018Glowgasm’ or \u2018Deep Throat’, when it so explicitly identifies the product with sex or a sexual act, it is, in effect, shedding all pretence and telling the woman that she is essentially a sex object and her success as one depends on her enthusiastically embracing the said product.<\/p>\n
Cosmetic companies claim that they go for these racy names to catch the attention of their increasingly young clientele, including girls in their tweens. In an age of short attention spans and the jangle of a million distractions, a lipstick with a gentle, flora-themed name like \u2018Peony’ or \u2018Evening Primrose’ seems decidedly tepid compared to, say, a raunchy \u2018Peep Show’. It’s all about getting the eyeballs, they say. It’s all about imbuing their product with a sexy vibe. And who doesn’t know that sex sells?<\/p>\n
Some brands are clearly in it for the shock value, such as Tom Ford’s \u2018F***ing Fabulous’ and \u2018Vanilla Sex’ eau de parfums for men and women, Soap and Glory’s \u2018Sexy Mother Pucker Lip Gloss’ (its foundation is called \u2018Glow Job’, by the way) or the Illamasqua Nail Varnish in a shade called \u2018MILF’. These ribald names are supposed to attract customers like moths to a star.<\/p>\n
Do beauty products with overtly sexual names sell better than those with more matter-of-fact monikers? In a random survey of lists of best-selling mascaras, I did not come across any where the \u2018Too Faced Better Than Sex Mascara’ was at No 1, although it did feature in the Top 10 everywhere.<\/p>\n
Perhaps beauty brands with risqu\u00e9 names and innuendo-laden puns do seem exciting and enticing to consumers. It must be working at some level, or why else would so many companies persist with the gambit? Be that as it may, I am worried about the brave souls who have the job of coming up with these so-called sexy names. How will they keep ratcheting up this relentless pornification of beauty brands? What’s next? Will the beauty industry adopt a Fifty Shades of Grey <\/em>kind of manual to brand its products in the future?<\/p>\n (Shuma Raha is a journalist and author)<\/em><\/p>\n Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author<\/strong><\/p>\n \u200bEver tried a blush called ‘Orgasm’? Or a mascara that struts its stuff with the moniker, ‘Better than Sex’? Sex sells. Brands know that all too well. Even if that means reducing women to mere sex objects.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ever tried a blush called \u2018Orgasm’? Or a mascara that struts its stuff with the moniker, \u2018Better than<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":108517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/uq23tvio_makeup_625x300_25_March_25-YyH8QW.jpeg",1201,675,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/uq23tvio_makeup_625x300_25_March_25-YyH8QW-150x150.jpeg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/uq23tvio_makeup_625x300_25_March_25-YyH8QW-300x169.jpeg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/uq23tvio_makeup_625x300_25_March_25-YyH8QW-768x432.jpeg",640,360,true],"large":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/uq23tvio_makeup_625x300_25_March_25-YyH8QW-1024x576.jpeg",640,360,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/uq23tvio_makeup_625x300_25_March_25-YyH8QW.jpeg",1201,675,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/uq23tvio_makeup_625x300_25_March_25-YyH8QW.jpeg",1201,675,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/uq23tvio_makeup_625x300_25_March_25-YyH8QW-825x575.jpeg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/uq23tvio_makeup_625x300_25_March_25-YyH8QW-590x410.jpeg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/?author=0"},"category_info":"Uncategorized<\/a>","tag_info":"Uncategorized","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/108517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}