Waitresses! Wear Red Lipstick, Get More Tips

Researchers at the Universite de Bretagne-Sud in France have made a fascinating discovery for restaurant servers: wearing red lipstick earns you significantly more tips when you’re serving gentlemen. Hello, crimson!

Sociologists studied seven waitresses as they served roughly 450 customers over the course of two months. The results are intriguing: when the servers sported red lips, they received tips from male customers 50 percent of the time, as compared to when they wore lighter shades like pink, beige or brown when they only received tips 30 percent of the time. (It should be noted, that lip color had zero effect on tipping behavior from female customers—hmmm.)

The study’s authors suggested that the reason for the difference in male tipping may be because red lips are “associated with an indication of estrogen levels, sexual arousal and health.”

Have you ever experienced this (now scientifically proven) phenomenon as a server in a restaurant or a bar?

—Candice

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