The Problem with Sexyy Red’s Lip Gloss Line

For the uninitiated, Sexyy Red is a twenty-five-year-old rapper with a taste for the obscene. Even if you’ve never heard of her, you may well have heard her viral hit “Pound Town” on TikTok. Sexyy Red champions a particular brand of female empowerment based predominantly on sexual liberation – taken to extreme lengths. Some sample lyrics from “Pound Town” illustrate this point better than I ever could: “I’m out of town, thuggin’ with my rounds / My coochie pink, my booty hole brown.”

Sexyy Red and Controversies

Sexyy Red has never shied away from controversy; instead, she has embraced the shocking as a way to build her brand. On the Lip Service podcast, she revealed a lyric she’d written referencing catching chlamydia from her partner, saying: “Damn this ni**a burnt me / Pu**y smoking like a cig.” She again caused chaos after deriding condoms and boasting about her history of sexually transmitted infections, telling Lil Yachty: “That wasn’t my condom. I don’t use condoms, baby. I’m the raw dog queen.” And based on a viral podcast moment, Sexyy Red has moved into a new business venture. 

Her Next Business Venture

Following the virality of her sexually explicit podcast content, it seems as though Sexyy Red has spotted an opportunity to cash in – or, at least, generate yet more of the media attention she craves. During a recent conversation with Interview Magazine, she revealed she’s branching out into beauty. “I got a lip gloss line dropping soon, y’all better shop with your girl,” she said. “I got all different flavours: Coochie Juice, Bootyhole Brown, Coochie Pink, Sex on My Period, Gonorrhea, Yellow Discharge, and Nut.”

Now, being that all we know about the upcoming project is this tiny soundbite, it really raises more questions than answers. The most pressing must clearly be, what exactly does she mean by flavours? Is she simply referring to the different gloss options within her line in terms of colour or packaging? Or do these glosses genuinely taste like their namesakes? And if this is the case, who outside of the fetish community would actually buy them?

More Information Is Needed

But this launch raises a further question that warrants a little more exploration. How far can the outrage economy go? Clearly, these lip glosses (whether they materialise as an actual makeup line or remain an attention-grabbing idea in the internet ether) are not expected to be a success by their own merit. Indeed, it seems Sexyy Red is banking purely on shock and disgust as the Unique Selling Point of her brand. And to me, a genuine makeup lover and lip gloss enthusiast, that simply doesn’t seem sustainable.