Ekaterina Netchaeva

Who they are

Ekaterina Netchaeva led the 2016 paper 'Strategically stunning: The professional motivations behind the lipstick effect' with McKenzie Rees. The published record consulted here is the abstract and the journal citation, so this page says what the paper argues and nothing about the author's career, institution or other publications, none of which has been verified.

Key papers

Netchaeva, E., & Rees, M. R. (2016). Strategically stunning: The professional motivations behind the lipstick effect. Psychological Science, 27(8), 1157-1168.

The abstract describes the lipstick effect as the rise in demand for appearance-enhancing products during economic recessions, which earlier research had attributed mainly to women wanting to appeal to financially stable partners. The authors propose that economic worry leads women to use these products both to attract romantic partners and to make a good impression at work, since both can help them become financially secure. They report that women with high economic concern invested more in their professional appearance than in their romantic attractiveness.

Key ideas

Economic concern can drive appearance spending through two routes at once, a romantic one and a professional one.

In the authors' reading, seeking resources through a job outweighs seeking them through a partner among women with high economic concern.

The paper is one of three accounts of the motive behind the effect on this site. Hill and colleagues (2012) found a partner-preference pathway, and MacDonald and Dildar (2020) found the rise in cosmetics spending held regardless of marital or employment status.

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