Cause: Legislation sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) giving the Food and Drug Administration more power to regulate ingredients used in cosmetics and other personal products. The Environmental Working Group, which is backing the bill, says the agency is currently hamstrung in controlling toxic substances that wind up in everything from deodorant to lip gloss.
Celeb: Who knows more about makeup than just about anyone? Trust a Kardashian on this issue, people — Kourtney Kardashian’s life as a reality-TV star and constant tabloid target means she’s “in hair and makeup” almost every day (meaning, she has a glam team to give her extensive prep).
Scene: A briefing for Senate staffers in the Russell Senate Office Building, though it was hardly a representative sampling — the crowd skewed to young, stylish women who looked like likely members of the KUWTK fan base. (Who says C-SPAN and E! are mutually exclusive tastes?) Kardashian arrived a fashionable 20 minutes late, so EWG officials vamped a bit. “I have a lot of Twitter followers, too,” joked EWG’s president, Ken Cook, comparing himself with his fashionable guest. “But most of them want to know about the CBO baseline.”
Finally, the guest of honor arrived, in a sleek black pantsuit and a cropped T-shirt that showed just a flash of flesh. Kardashian took questions and talked about how she had first become alarmed at the presence of toxic ingredients in her three children’s baby-care products, a concern that spread to the potions and makeup she was using, too.
Sound bite: Kardashian described having her lotion confiscated the day before at the airport because it was too large (stars, they’re just like us!), so she had to use the stuff provided by her hotel, whose contents she didn’t know. “The fact that we have to guess so much — we shouldn’t be walking around going, ‘is this okay?’” And later, she offered a pointed bit of advice to lawmakers: “It’s time for Congress to do its job.”