Grooming Secrets of the Washington Stars
While you're waiting for Thursday's vice presidential debate, here's Buzzfeed on the candidates' makeup routines and, more interestingly, the ways those sessions are concealed in the campaigns' expense reports:
A review of campaign filings and public reporting on how exactly American politicians put their faces on before television interviews and debates offers a glimpse of a part of the process most public figures (the men in particular) would prefer to keep secret. In a profession where the president shows off his basketball skills to Vanity Fair and where a leaked video of Senator John Edwards fixing his hair was a major political blow, they are less than eager to talk about their personal grooming routines.
The campaign of Rep. Paul Ryan, for instance, described $525 spent at at About Face, a salon in Winter, Fla., August 18 as "media production consulting."...Campaigns have grown expert at disguising beauty expenses in their filings since Edwards (again!) endured months of mockery for spending $400 on a haircut.
Joe Biden, manly man that he is, "appears to disdain the beauty brouhaha," Buzzfeed reports. Before one appearance, he only allowed the makeup artist "to apply concealer and a little powder." This touchup cost $250, and "was listed on the Obama campaign's Federal Election Commission report under 'Decorations.'"