Product Recall: Lip Venom
This week, Kate walks Doree through the tingly, plump history of DuWop’s Lip Venom. They discover the product’s connection to the idea that “beauty is pain,” the rise of lip fillers and plumpers in the early aughts, and Doree’s mom’s love of the show Felicity.
Mentioned in this Episode
How I Finally Learned To Love My Bigger Lips As A Black Woman
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 6-27-04: CONSUMED; The Pain Principle - The New York Times
What You Should Realize About Society’s Aspiration for Big Lips | Teen Vogue
Having Big Lips Was a Choice for Kylie Jenner—but Not for Me | Glamour
The Bow Lips Makeup Trend Harkens Back To Old Hollywood Glamour
TikTok's Cherub Lips Trend Made My Lips Look Bigger and Better Than Filler Does
Hailey Bieber's Brownie Glazed Lip Trend Is Appropriation | Time
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Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.
Doree: And I'm Doree Shafrir.
Kate: And we are not experts.
Doree: No. But we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums,
Kate: And today we are bringing you product recall, which is a weekly episode where we dig deeper into the history of an iconic product and it's impact.
Doree: Okay. You really, you really leaned into that.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah. We do this every Friday here on Forever 35.
Doree: Oh boy. What is happening?
Kate: Look, I'm just feeling a little sexy and lusty about my product to talk about today. Maybe it's the product I put it on this morning, so maybe it's the product I'm going to be talking about.
Doree: Oh Okay.
Kate: Listen, we also take requests for these episodes. We love to get feedback on what you might want to hear us recall. So if you'd like to reach us to share anything, you can send us a text message or leave us a voicemail at 7 8 1 5 9 1 0 3 9 0, and you can also email us at forever35podcast@gmail.com.
Doree: And you can visit our website forever35podcast.com for links to everything you mentioned on the show. We've been putting up links to all of our sources, so you can check those out. There's videos, there's tiktoks, there's all kinds of fun stuff. So check those out and follow us on Instagram @Forever35podcast. Join the Forever35 Facebook group password there is serums. And also send it for a newsletter at new newsletter <laugh> at forever35podcast.com/newsletter. And you can shop all of our fave recommended prods at shopmy.US/forever35
Kate: Doree. I just got off the phone with my dad who told me that he has been listening to these product recall episodes.
Doree: Well, well, well, well
Kate: And he said that my grandmother, Grammy Elsie had Noxzema and would put it on everything.
Doree: Interesting.
Kate: Yeah, it was a catchall kind of product for their family. This would've been in the fifties. So I thought that was fascinating. And he was like, it's been around forever. I was like, yeah, you probably learned that in my product recall episode, dad.
Doree: Oh my gosh.
Kate: But today I'm taking you on a journey, Doree. And we're not talking about Noxzema though. We are talking. Talk about a product that is also tingly.
Doree: Okay, go on.
Kate: Today's product recall episode is about DuWops lip venom. Doree. Are you familiar with this limp lip plumper?
Doree: Oh, I sure am. Okay. I owned it. I used it.
Kate: So let me start with this, because the first thing I think about when I think about lip venom is something that my mom used to say to me when I was younger, or she, I mean, look, my mom died when I was 27, so I was always younger, but she used to just say this to me, and it would always kind of be in a tongue in cheek manner, but she would say, it hurts to be beautiful. And I begin here because lip venom is a product that honestly does not feel good going on. So my mom was someone who she didn't really chase beauty, but I feel like if you are a person, especially a woman living or growing up in America, it's just a part of who we are. We are sucked into our cultural beauty experience. And it's interesting that I kind of thought of her and her saying that to me kind of jokingly because while she didn't really voice a lot of opinions to me about her appearance, one thing that she was self-conscious of was having "thin lips."
Doree: Interesting.
Kate: And as we will learn today, lip venom is a product designed to un-thin your lips. And what was interesting to me in starting this research is learning that over a hundred years ago, thin lips and kind of bow lips as popularized by the silent star Clara Bow were in.
And I want to just offer this caveat as I talk about trends and this conversation about lips. One, it should be noted if you're coming to this and you've never seen me before, is that I'm a white woman. And as we get into this conversation about "desired lips," lip trends what we're going to see over and over again is it's rooted in racism and cultural appropriation. So I just want to offer that upfront as a lens for us to kind of cycle everything through, including when we talk about what were the lip trends of a hundred years ago, the trends were presented on white women. That was the quote, default. And even in some of these kind of pieces and websites that go back and look at lip trends, everything is presented using images of white women. And we'll be talking about this throughout this whole conversation. But first,
Doree: this is interesting. Okay.
Kate: It's Interesting. It's interesting. And look like we could devote an entire podcast series to lips, lipstick, lip gloss, fillers, augmentation, all these things. But today we are just going to be talking about DuWops lip venom.
Doree: Okay, I'm ready.
Kate: Okay. So, tell me what you know about this product. Doree, just me saying it, saying lip venom. What is it? What do you think of? Do anything about who makes it, do you know where you can get it, what it costs? What is your familiarity with lip venom?
Doree: I mean, it's been a minute, but what I remember is it was like, I don't remember buying it at a drug store. I remember, I seem to remember it being sort of a "premium product." It was something that was supposed to temporarily give you a bee stung look on your lips. I believe that was the pitch. And yeah, I remember it being tingly. I don't recall putting it on and then feeling like I had fully plump lips. I don't know. I don't if they visibly changed or not, but I was willing to give it a shot
Kate: When this product emerged. So I'm just curious, when you first heard of it back in the day, because this really kind of took hold in the early ought's, did you think there was actual venom in the product?
Doree: No.
Kate: Okay. I just want to go on the record and say that I think I did. Okay. Fair. So here's the story behind Lip Venom. It was created in 1999.
Doree: Oh, that was a year.
Kate: A wild year. And that was when Lip Venom is a product put out by a company called DuWop. So DuWop was created and started in 1999 by two women, Christina Bartolucci and Laura Deluisa. Christina got her start doing hair and makeup on film and TV sets.
Doree: Okay.
Kate: She was mostly doing makeup. And I found an interview with her in which she told the story of how Lip Venom was created and where it kind of was the inception took place, and in the most late nineties way possible lip venom began on the set of the TV show. Felicity,
Doree: Stop.
Kate: I will not stop.
Doree: What?
Kate: I will not stop.
Doree: Wow.
Kate: Now, this is a TV show that I have never watched, which I know is will be upsetting to many folks right there. I feel like Felicity stans, they still thrive today.
Doree: Who is a Felicity stan?
Kate: I'm going to guess you're going to say our friend, mutual friend Danielle.
Doree: She might be, but she's not who I was thinking of.
Kate: Okay, hold on. Are you going to say you?
Doree: No.
Kate: Your husband, Matt?
Doree: No. Mm-hmm.
Kate: Who's a Felicity fan. Is it a celebrity or is this a person that we know real life?
Doree: It's a person that we know. Yeah.
Kate: Sammy Juno.
Doree: Again, they might be a fan. They're not who I'm thinking of. Okay.
Kate: Who are you thinking of?
Doree: My mother.
Kate: Shut up. <laugh>. What?
Doree: Yes. My mother was obsessed with Felicity, obsessed, obsessed, loved Felicity. Now, could it have had something to do with the fact that I graduated college in 1999 and Felicity is a show about a girl who is in college.
Kate: Do you think she was like projecting her empty nest nest onto the show Felicity?
Doree: Well, she still had two younger children at home, but I don't, and don't know if this was a conscious thing, but it didn't seem coincidental to me that she really took to this show in a way that, I mean, my mom is also someone who gets very into TV shows, but she got very into Felicity to the point where when I lived in Fort Green in the mid aughts, so did Carrie Russell, the star of Felicity, and one day we saw her walking down the street and she passed us. We were walking one direction, she was walking in the other. And when she passes us, my mom turns to me and she goes, Oh my God. And was freaking out almost collapsing with ecstasy. And then she and Carrie had just had a baby, and my mom was like, you should offer to babysit <laugh>. And I was like, mom, I'm not going to do that.
Kate: I love your mom looking at ways to get into Carrie Russell's life through you.
Doree: Yes. And then anytime my mom came to visit, she would be like, do you think we'll see Carrie Russell,
Kate: This is wild. Your mom was the last person I thought you were going to say. I really, really did not expect that.
Doree: Listen, expect the unexpected when it comes to me. You know what I'm saying? <laugh>.
Kate: Holy shit. Okay. Yeah. Well, this has taken a turn. Okay, Okay, well, this woman, Christina was a makeup artist on your mom's. favorite show Felicity. So here's what she said in this interview. She said, we launched due up in 1999. Our second product came out because if Carrie, meaning Carrie Russell had a scene where she was kissing anyone, her lips would get full and beautiful. My partner and I, her partner in DuWop tried to figure out how to recreate that flush on your lips that comes from kissing someone. So we created lip venom and the product was a hit. We experienced a trajectory that many companies experienced where we had a hit product, but we weren't sure how to build the company. Both creators of the company are no longer involved with it, just right off the bat. They've since gone on to do other projects themselves in kind of the beauty space. But I was fascinated that this was the origin.
Doree: yes, that's so interesting.
Kate: When I first got this product, I think I came to it in 2023, no 2003, and I legitimately thought it was made with snake or Bee venom, and that it irritated your lips with the venom. And that is what made them quote plumpy. And I think what's interesting about this name and just that idea is that there was something about using the product that felt like slightly terrifying and edgy and exhilarating. And I notice when I hear language about this product that it mirrors the language of Noxzema, meaning, oh, they focus a lot on the tingling sensation and the idea that you can "feel it working." And I think this is a really interesting kind of form of language, but also marketing the idea that you, If you can physically feel the product doing something on your body, that is how you know that it is working.
Doree: Also, let's be real. I mean, the fact that you just sort of assumed that there was actual venom in the product is not a coincidence. They deliberately, I think, kind of played that up, or at least didn't make it totally clear that that was not the case. You know what I mean?
Kate: Yeah. As we'll discuss in a little bit, I can tell you all the ingredients in it, and I could have easily called the name lip Ginger. It. It's lip venom is a very deliberate marketing strategy. So here's a video clip I found featuring Christina, one of the co-founders of DuWop, and she is applying the product onto a model and kind of talking about it. So why don't we both take a beat and watch this?
Christina Barto...: DuWop has the distinction of creating the entire lip plumping category with this product Lip venom. We created lip venom to pull the natural color for it to the lips, giving them instant fullness, the highest shine, and a flush of rosy color. The moment that I put the venom on Leah's lips, she can feel them begin to transform, instant fullness, the highest shine, and a flush of natural color.
Kate: So you can hear in that clip, which is kind of just like a tutorial video of just showing the product the language that she uses, right? This idea that if you, that you can feel it transform. And if you watch the video, which we will link to so you can see it for yourselves. I don't know. Doree, did you notice any transformation?
Doree: It looked like a pretty gloss.
Kate: Yeah, it looks like a clear gloss. I didn't notice any lip plumping or taking shape. I didn't notice redness coming to the surface. But what is interesting is that was the press that this product was getting, is that it would hurt. So I found one New York Times article from 2004 in which one person described putting on lip venom this way, quote, with every passing minute, the burning intensified until my eyes were almost watering. So what I want to do now before we take our first break is I am going to apply my lip Venom, which I purchased for this episode, and we will take a minute and just see if my lips transform. Does that sound good to you, Doree?
Doree: Sounds great.
Kate: Okay, here we go. I'll also describe what I'm feeling. I really like to experiment with these products and product recall. And I should note, I have no lip filler or anything. I've done nothing. No lip augmentations. These are my natural lips, and I've coated it in lip venom. It has the taste of a bubble gum, like a minty bubble gum.
Doree: Oh, Kate, stop <laugh>.
Kate: Sorry. Sorry. You don't like the smacking. And now my lips are starting to tingle. So let's take a break and we'll be back after this break with a update on how my lips are doing. Okay.
Doree: alright, we're back. How are your lips?
Kate: They are tingling. I don't feel like it hurts necessarily, but it's a weird sensation.
Doree: I mean, your lips look nice,
Kate: But they don't look bigger. It's just a very sticky, clear gloss, right? That's all it is. So
Doree: Wasn't this Kylie Jenner's whole thing when she had at first clearly gotten lip filler and then told everyone that it was just her Kylie lip kit?
Kate: Oh, we're going to talk about Kylie. We're going to talk about Kylie.
Doree: Okay. Sorry. Go on.
Kate: Okay. So let me first just kind of tell you what's happening here. So on DuWops website, lip venom claims to be iconic and was the very first lip plumper on the market, creating the lip plumping category for the beauty industry. I do want to note that my lips are still tingling. And here's what is in the product. According to this website, it's a blend of essential oils, which include cinnamon, winter green, and ginger that cause the blood to rush to the surface of the lips flushing and swelling them slightly. The gloss also includes jajoba and avocado oil that moisturize and give the lips intense shine. You end up with a shiny, naturally rosy pout that cannot be achieved by wearing ordinary lip gloss. So the language there is insinuating that if I had just put a regular shiny gloss on my lips, I would not be having the same effect I would personally beg to differ. But this is what you are being sold. And Lip venom was a smash. So by 2004, five years after they first ope started DuWop, it was a top selling product at Sephora. And according to the New York Times, it was raking in about 4 million in revenue, which is a good amount of money.
Doree: It, see, I, no, I feel like I have no real perspective, but it seems like a lot.
Kate: So this product kind of took hold during this time, and this was happening at a time when lip injections and lip filler was becoming more common, but it hadn't quite reached the peak of what we've seen in the last five to 10 years. So you'll see kind of the parallel, and it also kind of mirrors the obsession in, and when we say beauty, I'm talking about really white beauty culture, right? With bigger lips. So before we get into that a little bit deeper, I want to share with you, Doree, a news clip from a TexArkana, Texas local newscast called Test It Tuesday, in which a news anchor named rich tests out lip venom. Okay,
Newscaster: We're out for full lips, and it's test it Tuesday with one of the hottest products at the makeup counter lip plumper troubleshooter. Rich Deniro is live here to explain, Rich
Rich Deniro: Latest on the makers of lip venom prefer their product called a lip enhancer. They experimented with cayenne pepper and crushed mustard seeds, all in effort to irritate and inflate lips. the focus is on the face
Woman on News: They want to be like the celebrities
Rich Deniro: Customers are coming in for some of the hottest products on the market.
Woman on News: They say their lips look good. I want mine to look good.
Rich Deniro: No need for injections. Lip plumpers are like chapstick with a kick.
Woman on News: The tingling sensation they feel like it's working right off the bat for 'em.
Rich Deniro: Model. Jennifer Pritchett was daring enough to try a product called Lip Venom.
Jennifer Pritch...: Lip Venom is a spicy tingly gloss that uses essential oils to enhance lips, natural color, and shape the result. Shiny fuller bee stung lips.
Rich Deniro: It's applied like gloss and goes to work causing a rush of blood to the lips
Jennifer Pritch...: It does feel like I've eaten a really hot pepper and I can't get it off my lips.
Rich Deniro: Our tester reported an intense tingling sensation and shiny redder, fuller lips.
Jennifer Pritch...: I don't know if it's just my imagination, but they do feel a little bit thicker kind of when I talk they f they don't quite feel the same as they usually do.
Rich Deniro: The $15 product is cheaper than surgery.
Woman on News: It did plump up her lips
Rich Deniro: And smells great too.
Jennifer Pritch...: I don't know if I would use it every single day but maybe some special occasion when you're wanting to look is especially sensual.
Rich Deniro: The effects of lip venom last for about 20 minutes. The company says they were the first to invent the concept. Now there're about 30 copycat products. Well just be prepared to share Live in Studio six. I'm Troubleshooter Rich D Mural, K T A L, news Channel six.
Newscaster: All right, thank you. Rich talking. You trying it? Yeah. I don't know. I don't like the idea of my lips feeling like I've rubbed jalapenos on <laugh>. Sounds like it might hurt. So I'll stick with the liner, I guess.
Kate: I dunno. Yeah. Thank you. Rich, troubleshooter Rich, rich Deniro doing the Lord's work. Now, what I think is fascinating is the fact that this person and I am currently again, still wearing this lip vena. My lips are still tingling, but the fact that she thought she felt her lips feel larger. Did you catch her say that?
Doree: I mean, that makes no sense. <laugh>. Also, what's funny to me too is how they say it's supposed to last 20 minutes. That's like nothing.
Kate: I know you would be reapplying and reapplying over and over and over again, right? That's crazy. So what you can gather though from this clip was from 2005, the market is already oversaturated with lip plumpers at this point, and you can now find lip plumpers everywhere. I mean, I don't even need to list the brands. I just a quick Google. And there were some at Target, you can obviously get them at Sephora and Alta, and anywhere you're going to get makeup products, you're going to find Lip Plumpers. And these two founders of the company eventually both left Christina went on to run NYX which I thought was fascinating. And
Doree: oh, okay.
Kate: Yeah. And then she launched something called Peek, Peek, beauty And Deluisa launched something called LaRoccaa Skincare. I believe her last name changed to LaRocca. And it didn't seem like either of these lines, Peek Beauty or LoRocca Skincare were especially well-known or active. I could be wrong. I had never heard of either of them before. I'd never really seen them featured. And I believe that, from what I've read kind of about the way the company was handled, I think neither of them, they weren't experienced and having a product blow up. And so. The company didn't quite live up to what its possible potential could have been. And what's fascinating to me about Doop is that you can't get it at Sephora or Ulta. I tried, I had to order this off of Amazon, so it's not even still a part of the conversation necessarily.
When it comes to lip plumpers, at least if you're considering where folks are shopping for stuff like this, you can get it off their website. It is $16.99 for the traditional lip Phnom. That is the one that I currently have on my lips. But it seems to kind of have faded into the background of the lip plumper conversation. And as lip venom was blowing up, lip injections were also wildly on the rise. Let's take a break, and then we're going to come back and talk about how lip venom kind of also paralleled the rise of lip injections.
Doree: All right, we'll be right back.
Kate: Okay. So Doree, according to this article I found on a website called Dazed digital.com, I learned something very, something I'd never known about Lip injections, which is that they have been around since the 19 hundreds. Wow. And they were first started as a way to do facial reconstruction for people who had oral lesions from tuberculosis. Whoa. So these doctors were experimenting with injecting fat as a way to do reconstruction on people's faces, and it didn't really work. And then they kind of shifted to this being just a purely cosmetic procedure, but they were inject and they were injecting fat. And so as the procedure became more cosmetically focused by the 1960s and seventies, it was a more well known procedure. It was expensive at the time, and doctors were using silicone. Whoa. And this is when we first started seeing lip injections, but by the nineties is when it really started to gain traction.
And that was when they were started using collagen, which I think changed the game. Now it is hyaluronic acid. So now when we talk about Kylie Jenner, who though denied it first, at first got lip fillers at the age of 16, that's when she first got them. Whoa. So there was an article for the cut written by an author or a writer named Jess McCue, who found that the American Society of Plastic Surgeons found an increase of 60% in lip augmentations between 2000- 2017. Wow. And Kylie, who created Kylie Cosmetics with, and really launched with those lip kits, which was a lipstick and a lip liner. And remember at the time these would sell out. I mean, you could not get your hands on them.
They sold 630 million worth of makeup unless than three years. And Mich also writes that the influx of just social media posting about lip injections, there are 29.7 million posts on Instagram tagged lips. 356,000 of them are labeled lip injections. Wow. Now, as we're talking about this, as I mentioned up top, we are talking about the idea of trends through a white lens because have as many, many, many black women have noted in a variety of pieces, big lips are fuller lips. Being a trend is only a trend for people who can opt in and out of having them.
And Kylie has been called in for years as have other folks who have embraced lip lip injections, and I should say white or white presenting folks of cultural appropriation. So there's a really great piece that I read in glamour. It's written by Taryn Payne, and it's called Having Big Lips was a Choice for Kylie Jenner, but not for me. And in it, she writes, white women like Angelina Jolie, Kim Kardashian, and of course Kylie Jenner are celebrated for features black women are chastised for. And she gives a ton of examples of this one being an incident in Fashion Week in 2016, which was like right when Kylie's lips were blowing up. There was a photo of this Ugandan model named Aamito Lagum, who's featured on Max's Instagram. And people, the comment section was just flooded with horrible, nasty, racist comments about the size of her lips. So the things that these white women are celebrated for are, as Terrence says, things that black women are chastised for.
So I read a lot of pieces specifically written by black women about their relationship to their lips and how it kind of correlates with the ways in which larger lips gets co-opted as a trend by white folks and who can then decide, I'm done with this, which is what is happening. There's been a conversation online about how Bow lips are back for 2023 and cherub lips are currently big on TikTok. So I don't know. This has kind of left me considering a few things. One, the correlation between beauty and physical pain and how that was a selling point and is a selling point for products. And two, I have kind of been reflecting on the ways in which I have, and the ways in which I still do participate in cultural appropriation via my beauty purchases, my beauty practices. So that is what I have kind of been left reflecting on. Now in 2023, I am able to be like, oh God, I was using lip venom to get fuller lips. I was participating in this total appropriation. But at the time, interesting. At the time did not dawn on me. Doree did not dawn on me.
Doree: Okay. I mean, look, know better, do better. You know what I mean?
Kate: And so I wanted to share another just quote from a piece from an author named Escher Walcott from Refinery 29. It's a piece titled How I Finally Learned to Love My Bigger Lips as a Black Woman. And she discusses kind of how she said during the two thousands, a look that once left me unconfident as a child rose to popularity in particular among white women. And she writes, it wasn't Carrie Washington or Brandy who are publicly admired for their naturally full lips when I was a teen. But Angelina Jolie and Julia Roberts fast forward to 2021. And it's fair to say that lip fillers have infiltrated mainstream society with big lips evolving into admirable feature. But black women who tend to have them naturally are not considered inspiration. And this was another just interesting thing that caught my eye as I looked at pieces about lip trends over the last century.
Anytime I came across some sort of article or visual representation, it was always on white women's faces. So that is where I'm kind of letting my thoughts. I think lip venom, it's not a product I'm going to ever reach for, although I will say I do the glossiness of it. The glossiness is kind of nice. It's been 20 minutes, but my lips are still shiny. The tingling is still there a little bit. It's wearing down. It's not a product I'm ever going to reach for. I know I've never really been drawn to lip plumpers either beyond the time when I used this in the 2000 threes and fours. But I am kind of using just my learning about this product as a means to remind myself to dig deeper into when I am participating in cultural appropriation, which look I know is all the time and not realizing it. So that's the history of Lip Venom Doree, a product that you can still get if you want, still out there.
Doree: It's still out there, but definitely does not have the same cultural resonance as it once did.
Kate: No, this was like, I can remember sitting in a colleague's office when I was an assistant at a marketing firm, and she was like, have you ever heard of this? You can barely get your hands on it. And I was like, holy shit. I don't even think I'd ever spent $15 on a product before that. Just the price tag alone made it seem extremely exclusive, and it really felt like a portal into actual physical transformation through a product. That is how I remember thinking about it, that I would use this product and experience a physical morphing of my mouth.
Doree: Wow. Yeah, I mean, I definitely bought into it also, even though I don't think I really believed that it did anything, but it was so of the times.
Kate: So of the times. So if you have memories of using this product or if you still purchase lip plumpers, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Doree: Yeah. Well, thanks for listening everybody. Thank you, Kate, for taking us on this walk down memory lane.
Kate: Thank you Doree's mom for watching Felicity. Yeah,
Doree: Who knew? All right. Bye everyone.