Lipstick Ban Reversed By Turkish Airlines After Backlash

The lipstick ban set in place by Turkish Airlines has now been lifted after backlash by secular Turks who believe the country is becoming too Islamic. The company said in a statement this month that all female flight attendants were not permitted to use red or dark pink lipstick of nail polish because it would impair the “visual integrity” of the staff.

Since the release, odd lipstick ban has received enough negative attention for a lead executive to jump in and clear things up. Dr. Temel Kotil, President and cheif executive of Turkish Airlines, spoke with reporters in London and made it known the “lipstick ban release was put in place by “low-level” managers.

“As to the lipstick, we had no problems but somehow low-level managers put together a paper without asking us and that paper leaked to the media and became a big issue,” Katil told reporters, according to Reuters.

Originally, the airline defended the ban by stating that simple make-up is “preferred for staff working in the service sector.”

Now their stance on the lipstick ban has changed, or remains the same if you look at it from Kotil’s perspective.

“It was not a decision actually, there’s no approval,” he told The Independent. “This is taking us one step back but we’re going four steps forward.”

The company will now move on and female flight attendants can go back to wearing red lipstick and nail polish, though their chief executive insists they never had to stop in the first place.

His timing is a little late as many Turks expressed their disapproval of the lipstick ban on Twitter after the news was released. In protest, numerous women posted photos of themselves wearing red lipstick in support of the female flight attendants.

Do you believe the red lipstick ban was a hierarchy problem that never made its way to the top of the chain?

[Image via Creative Commons]