National Lipstick Day: Revisiting What Happened a Month Ago
Today, July 29, is National Lipstick Day. It’s a day we’re supposed to celebrate the little cosmetic product in a tube. But let’s be honest—it’s really just a day for retailers to sell more lipstick.
Coincidentally, it was exactly one month ago, when on June 29, the United States Supreme Court used the word “lipstick” in one of its opinions—at least in a dissent.
In one of its last decisions during the most recent term, SCOTUS rejected affirmative action and the use of race as an admissions factor at colleges and universities. (In earlier decisions, the Court had endorsed taking race into account as one factor among many to promote educational diversity.)
Last month’s vote was 6 to 3, with the Court’s liberal members in dissent.
But the decision doesn’t completely shut the door to giving college applicants extra consideration if they have suffered bias, discrimination, or other hardships.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who wrote the majority decision, suggested that admissions officers may still consider race as part of the college essay or personal statement.
“Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise,” Roberts wrote.
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the majority’s concession fell well short of achieving the goal of diversity:
"This supposed recognition that universities can, in some situations, consider race in application essays is nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig. The court’s opinion circumscribes universities’ ability to consider race in any form by meticulously gutting respondents’ asserted diversity interests.”
"This supposed recognition that universities can, in some situations, consider race in application essays is nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig."
To put “lipstick on a pig” is a rhetorical expression, used to convey the message that making superficial or cosmetic changes is a futile attempt to disguise the true nature of a product. So, if you put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig.
Happy National Lipstick Day!
