chapstick culture

Rachel Tandon, January 2015

2 ¾ inches x 34 inches unrolled, x3

Plotter-print on paper

In response to a prompt to create a zine inspired by an everyday object, I chose to make a zine about chapstick. I began by researching as much as I could about chapstick, accepting everything I found, and eventually discovering there are many more facets to it than just its history. I found that chapstick is not only a highly referenced object in current pop culture, but also something that’s shaping our culture. And, it is an object adamantly loved and adamantly hated.

Inspired by the strong, and sometimes trivial, responses I surveyed on the internet, I wrote this zine emphasizing the absurdity of chapstick as a simple, small, practical object, yet something that can also inspire strong cultural reactions. This duality inspired the way in which I presented each category, pairing each objective, fairly obvious truth about chapstick, with a similar yet much more unexpected parallel fact. The zine comes in a set of three volumes–use, function, and social–and each volume rolls up into a chapstick-sized tube for easy distribution. The content of the zine is a combination of writing, personal illustrations, and digital collage.