Hillary: putting a face on the president?

She's set to be the most powerful person in the world. So why are we obsessed with how she looks?

Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ll know that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party nominee in the poll to elect the 45th president of the United States of America, which is taking place today.

Absolutely. It’s only right that everyone has heard of the woman vying to become the most powerful person in the world; not least because for the first-time ever, the contender for highest office is a woman.

But is it right that we have become so interested in this woman’s appearance? What’s her make-up got to do with it, exactly?

Now it could be said that the 2016 presidential election race has been more of a personality contest than a battle between political ideologies and their representatives. And, as we all know, with television personalities comes scrutiny regarding their looks. If it’s a personality contest, it’s also – at least to some extent – a beauty contest.

Normally I would not let myself be overly concerned about how much we are all concerned about how people look – that’s just how it is. But it really bothers me that “Hillary Clinton without make-up” has been Googled three million times; many more times than “Hillary Clinton Iran”.

So Clinton’s policy towards Iran matters less than what she’s like in the morning without her face on? And this is how it is for the woman who is set to “break the glass ceiling” as the first-ever female President of the United States. This order of priorities is surely shameful; and yet, even though it riles me, at the same time I have to admit than I am just as guilty as anyone else.

Try as I might, I can’t stop myself wondering whether Hillary is wearing too much make-up for a woman of her age. Or is she not trying hard enough on the make-up front? I know I shouldn’t care if Hillary wants to go make-up free or pile it on; but I also I know I’m not alone in judging her as much for how she looks as on what she says and does.

So for those of us who can’t help being interested in Hillary’s make-up routines: she often opts for a bright and powerful lip colour with soft base colours to compliment her honey hair and skin colouring. Kriss Soterin-Blevens is her regular make-up artist and she insists it’s all about the lighting. Soterin-Blevens goes on to say that the science of light reflection is key to presidential makeup (possibly a reference to one of the first-ever TV debates in which fresh-faced Kennedy beat Nixon because of “tricky Dicky’s” five o’clock shadow).

It gives me no pleasure to admit it, but even with a woman on the brink of entering the White House as the first lady president (rather than the president’s first lady), nowadays a good primer can be more important than what happened in the primaries.

 

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