Grooming Secrets of the Washington Stars

Making candidates pretty, one $250 touchup session at a time.

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.'"