Do You Really Care Who Does Hillary Clinton’s Makeup?

Oh, for crying out loud. Hillary Clinton is the Secretary of State, a big and important job in which the president actually listens to what she has to say. So why, then, is the entire first paragraph of a recent Vogue article about Clinton dedicated to the color of her pantsuit at the U.N. General Assembly meeting recently (red, in case you were wondering)?

In the next paragraph, we learn that one day at the State Department Clinton was “wearing no makeup” and looked “tired and cranky.” Fret not, though, because her deputy chief of staff handed her a cosmetics bag and Clinton applied her own mascara, lipstick, blush and powder.

Really, Vogue? I don’t care that Clinton does her own makeup and (still) wears brightly colored pantsuits.

Of course, Vogue is a fashion magazine, so you’d expect some mention of a profile subject’s clothes and beauty regimen. But she’s the friggin’ Secretary of State! Who puts the eye makeup on the person who might keep us from getting bombed by Iran is irrelevant!

Usually the magazine’s meaty profiles (and I’ve read nearly all of them for about the past seven years) don’t dwell so much on voyeuristic grooming regimens as they fawn over the subject’s power. I wonder if it’s Clinton’s beleaguered history of dealing with sexist criticism of her wrinkles and headbands that shaped Vogue‘s profile—not, you know, journalistic ideals. And Vogue thought it was just giving the people what they wanted.

Frankly, I’m more interested in her goals for foreign policy and the fact that Clinton has a plaque over her desk inscribed with Winston Churchill’s famous saying, “NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP.” [Vogue]