The red lipstick movement: exploring #vermelhoembelem and feminist hashtag movements in the context of the rise of far-right populism in Portugal

ABSTRACT

During the 2021 Portuguese presidential election campaign, far-right candidate André Ventura insulted the feminine presentation of left-wing candidate Marisa Matias, linking her use of red lipstick to a perceived lack of professionalism and implied sexualization. The Portuguese public reacted to this insult by launching the feminist hashtag movement—#VermelhoEmBelem (translated as #RedInBelem), which quickly became one of the few national feminist hashtag movements to reach widespread visibility, receiving national and transnational support. This article offers a critical analysis of the #VermelhoEmBelem movement, grounded on a direct unstructured observation of the cross-platform hashtag—mainly across Twitter and Instagram—complemented by an analysis of news articles about the movement. By focusing on #VermelhoEmBelem, this article explores the relationship between feminist action, gendered discourses, and far-right populist politics. It foregrounds how gendered insults can generate a wave of feminist solidarity and anti-fascist sentiments, which was reified through online self-representations of people of various genders with their lips painted red. Yet, it highlights how hashtag movements can encompass significant tensions—mobilising both widespread support and sexist backlash, carrying the potential for symbolic and consciousness-raising impact, while having limited impact on the results of the Portuguese elections the movement derived from.

KEYWORDS:

• Hashtag feminism
• social media
• far-right
• femininity
• gender politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We have refrained from labelling Chega within the political frames of extreme-right and radical-right (Cas Mudde 2019), as there are different understandings of current far-right discourses.

2. For further information, please refer to Chega’s website and political agenda (2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101059460; and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [PD/BD/135290/2017].

Notes on contributors

Sofia P. Caldeira

Sofia P. Caldeira is Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at CICANT, Lusófona University. She holds a Communication Sciences PhD from Ghent University, Belgium (2020), funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). Her research focuses primarily on feminist media studies, social media, self-representation practices, politics of gender representation, and everyday aesthetics. She currently serves as Chair of ECREA’s Digital Culture and Communication section.

Ana Flora Machado is a PhD student in Culture Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal. She is currently completing her research on the female gaze, through the analysis of photographic self-representations and selfies, articulated with Visual Culture, Media Studies, and Feminist Critical Theory. She holds an MSc in Marketing and Business Management from Aston University, where she completed her thesis on male representation in advertisements. She is currently involved in several research projects, while managing a wine company in the Douro Region.