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Kourtney Kardashian Is Pushing Congress for Stricter Cosmetics Regulations


While Kourtney Kardashian may have famously said she doesn’t read the news on her family’s long-running reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, she made some today in Washington, D.C., where she appeared with members of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) at a Capitol Hill briefing on cosmetics reform.

The issue of cosmetics safety reform is one that has become more and more prominent in recent years, in no small part thanks to the EWG’s work to raise awareness about chemicals found in personal care products and their work to empower the FDA to regulate them more freely. “It’s been more than 80 years since Congress last acted to pass any sort of cosmetics legislation,” Scott Faber, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at EWG, said at the beginning of the briefing. “And that’s why it’s so important that Kourtney is here today to lend her voice.”

It’s also why the group supports the Personal Care Products Safety Act, a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D—Calif.) and Susan Collins (R—Maine) that, among other things, would require companies to disclose their ingredients to the FDA, register the facilities where their products are made, and permit the FDA to insist on warning labels where necessary.

“Under current law, cosmetics companies can put just about anything in cosmetics and personal care products. There are few if any restrictions on the kinds of ingredients that can be added to personal care products or the amount of those chemicals,” Faber explained. “What the Feinstein-Collins bill will do, is it will give FDA the power to review the most controversial ingredients or chemicals in personal care products, and ultimately make a determination if those ingredients are safe or safe at certain levels or not safe.” The bill has the support of a number of beauty companies both large and small—from Procter & Gamble, Revlon, Estée Lauder, and L’Oréal to Juice Beauty, EO, and Vapour Beauty.

Any fan of KUWTK knows that Kourtney is the member of her family that is perhaps the most conscientious about what she puts into (and onto) both her own body and those of her three children, so her interest in this issue isn’t completely surprising. She says it was the birth of her first child, Mason, that caused her to start thinking differently about products. “I would get so many baby gifts,” she explained. “And a lot of it was skin care products for my kids. I would use the things that people sent me just assuming these are baby products and that they should be safe.” (In fact, there is no reason to assume that just because a beauty product is geared toward children that it is more regulated, as our recent Glamour investigation showed.) “Some of them had a lot of toxic chemicals so I just started researching myself,” Kardashian continued. “And I found EWG and have the Healthy Living app and I just started getting my own information.” (The app provides environmental ratings for over 200,000 foods and products.) She says that she tries to do the work herself, but as a busy working mom she doesn’t always have the bandwidth and thinks it’s time for Congress to do its job: “As parents, there’s only so much time that we have to research, and we rely on experts, but I think there’s only so much that we can do.”

Of course, reporters had a few questions for the eldest Kardashian offspring about her family’s own ties to the beauty business. “I am from a beauty family. And so, my sisters’ products have been checked by EWG and they scored well,” Kardashian said. But she couldn’t speak to the specific ingredients in Kylie Cosmetics or KKW Beauty. “Those are their companies,” she said. “But I think it would be nice if there were laws to regulate cosmetics so that the people running these businesses and these companies can have some standard of what to use.” She told an anecdote about one of her hairstylists, an expert, who wasn’t even aware of some the chemicals in what they had both considered some of the best products available. “I get hair and makeup almost every day for filming and for my job,” she continued. “And I think…I go in blindly. I have all sorts of makeup artists and they want to use the best products and even they don’t have the information.”

And of course, there was a quick plug for her new collaboration with her sister Kylie Jenner—three eye shadow palettes and three lip colors—which launches today. “It’s a Kourt x Kylie collab. It launches today at 3 P.M. Pacific time,” Kardashian said. “Kylie and I were working on it for over a year. We kept changing our minds about colors and going back and forth and it was really fun to work with her and be creative together…We had a party together at Coachella. It was my first time there, at almost 39-years-old. But it was really fun and we’re really excited that it comes out today.”

As for the Personal Care Products Safety Act, its advocates hope Kardashian’s involvement today will make it known to a wider audience who are ready to make their voices heard on the issue. The bill is currently with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (the HELP Committee).

Related Stories:
–The Ugly Truth Behind Makeup Marketed to Kids
–7 Easy Swaps That’ll Make Your Beauty Products Less Toxic
–15 Natural Products Clean Beauty Pros Swear By



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Brianna Wu Faced Down the Alt-Right and Now She's Running for Congress


The #Gamergate cyberattack against Brianna Wu, in which an In­ter­net mob terrorized the software engineer after she spoke out against sexism and misogyny in the gaming industry, was tactically elegant in its launch and spectacularly cruel in its delivery. At its height in 2014, she saw her home address and personal information scrawled across the Web, and received more than 180 death threats across her social media accounts. Among the most vile were promises to rape her with military-grade weapons. Wu knows that threats like these led some women to quit the business and likely discouraged many others from entering altogether. But she continued to speak out.

Now the 40-year-old video game developer is launching herself into a different kind of firestorm: She’s running for Congress in Massachusetts’ Eighth District on a platform crafted, in part, from her experience facing off against white-supremacist groups, which, she notes, have been against not only women gamers but also public policies that benefit anyone not white, heterosexual, and male. Her goal: economic and political parity for women, LGBTQ Americans, people of color, and the working poor. “All these forces are tied together,” Wu told ­Glamour from her headquarters in Walpole. “The system is not working for any of them.”

The idea that the system is broken has motivated thousands of women to launch political campaigns; 11,000 have told She Should Run, a nonpartisan group that offers resources to women interested in seeking office, that they are actively planning to run. Founder and CEO Erin Loos Cutraro says this new crop of talent is “sick of not having their voices and perspectives represented” and recognizes “the impact they can make at all levels of government.”

Wu, a self-taught engineer who started programming at age eight and took university classes at 14, is planning a campaign that’s social-media-savvy and based in door-to-door canvassing. She’ll need every tool in her arsenal to pull off a Democratic primary win against incumbent Stephen Lynch, who’s heavily backed by the state’s party. (“I see a Democratic party that’s not standing up for us,” she says.) If elected, she pledges, “my first mission is to make investments in the economy to help people just be able to live.” Also on the docket: cybersecurity legislation to protect online privacy.

Wu’s liberal convictions may be surprising given her roots in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she grew up in a conservative household with a steady diet of Fox News and, she says, regularly heard conversations disparaging people of color and Jews. She got her first political experience interning for former U.S. Senator Trent Lott (R–Miss.), but in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, when the Bush administration declared war on Iraq, she felt she was on the wrong side.

“I haven’t talked to my family since I went home with a ‘John Kerry for President’ bumper sticker on my car,” Wu says. “It hurts me every single day.” But she refuses to keep her mouth shut and her head down, especially after seeing white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Boston in August. The rallies, she says, “just made me double down.”

Wu knows that stepping into politics could make her a target again. “Of course there’s fear,” she says. “But ultimately, I am an American, and I love this country. I can live with knowing that running for office puts my life in danger. What I can’t live with is doing nothing.”

Know a woman who’d be a great leader? Or want to run yourself? Go to emilyslist.org, sheshouldrun.org, or maggieslist.org.

This article originally appeared in the November 2017 issue.



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Mikie Sherrill Once Flew Helicopter Missions in the Navy. Now She’s Running for Congress


Mikie Sherrill spent nearly 10 years flying helicopter missions for the Navy. She served as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office and developed programs to help federal prisoners reenter their communities. She also coached her 11-year-old daughter’s lacrosse team and witnessed firsthand how competitive suburban parents can be. But her latest pursuit may be the toughest: She’s running for Congress in the 2018 midterm and taking on 22-year Republican incumbent Rodney Frelinghuysen, a political powerhouse in his own right.

But as Sherrill can attest, she’s never been one to back down from a challenge.

It started when she was just 10 years old. Then a fifth grader, Sherrill was determined to join the military one day and become a pilot like her World War II veteran grandfather. At her father’s suggestion, she decided she’d enlist in the Navy. The fact that the Naval Academy, at the time, did not admit women was of no concern—they’d change the rules once it was time for her to go to college.

Sure enough, Sherrill enrolled in the Naval Academy at Annapolis and went on to serve in the Navy for nearly a decade. She then went to Georgetown Law and eventually joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey. For the past seven years, she, her husband, and their four children have been living in Montclair, New Jersey, a New York City suburb where Sherrill not only coaches girls’ lacrosse, but also manages her son’s baseball team. After leaving the U.S. Attorney’s office last spring, Sherrill planned to go into criminal justice reform.

Then the election happened—and Sherrill was compelled to take action.

“I fought for this country my whole adult life,” Sherrill says over iced tea at a neighborhood coffee shop. “I have four kids. There wasn’t a point where I could consciously decide that I was not going to fight for the future of this country.”

PHOTO: Courtesy of Mikie Sherrill

Democratic House candidate and former Navy helicopter pilot Mikie Sherrill commanding an H-3 Sea King

Truth be told, Sherrill’s congressional bid will most certainly be a fight. She’s facing a monolithic figure within the Republican establishment—one who not only descends from New Jersey political dynasty, but currently helms the House Appropriations Committee (the very one that controls Congress’s purse strings).

For those less familiar with New Jersey political families, the Frelinghuysens go back nearly three centuries, spanning four senators, two representatives, and one cabinet member. Schools, roads, a township—even an arboretum—all bear the Frelinghuysen name.

Rodney Frelinghuysen has sold himself as a moderate Republican, one who’s fiscally conservative but more lax on social issues. He first won New Jersey’s 11th District in 1994 and hasn’t faced a serious challenger since.

Though Frelinghuysen took 58 percent of the vote in 2016, Donald Trump captured less than 50 percent of the district, barely eking out a win over Hillary Clinton. Frelinghuysen has gone further right since Trump took office, voting in line with Trump 97.6 percent of the time. And despite weekly gatherings outside his office, he has yet to host a single in-person town hall in 2017. Instead, he’s opted for tele-town halls, which some have argued give politicians the opportunity to screen questions.

As Frelinghuysen continues to align with an unpopular President and refuse in-person meetings with constituents, he finds himself in a more vulnerable place with his voters—one that makes him prime for a surprise defeat.

“It’s not going to be an easy race, and Mikie knows that,” says Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “But following 2016, what we have come to rely on as conventional wisdom may not work the same way. If there was a year where you could have a better chance taking on an incumbent, it could be 2018.”

Sherrill officially launched her campaign in early May, and quickly scored two major endorsements: One from the VoteVets.org, a political action committee dedicated to getting veterans in office, and was a major campaign spender in 2016; and another from EMILY’s List, a PAC supporting pro-choice Democratic women running for office.

“More than anything, 2016 served as a wakeup call for people who had been politically involved but never thought about running before,” said Julie McClain Downey, the national director of campaign communications at EMILY’s List. “Mikie’s background is something that’s unique and exciting for the time that we’re in. She’s a veteran. She’s a former prosecutor. She’s taking on a sitting Republican incumbent and is ready to be a leader of her community.”

Mikie Sherrill stands, second from the left, with “Desert Duck” pilots outside her aircraft while serving in the Arabian Gulf. Sherrill, whose name appears printed on the H-3 Sea King to the left of the open door, flew helicopters for almost a decade after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1994.

PHOTO: Courtesy of Mikie Sherrill

Mikie Sherrill stands, second from the left, with “Desert Duck” pilots outside her aircraft while serving in the Arabian Gulf. Sherrill, whose name appears printed on the H-3 Sea King to the left of the open door, flew helicopters for almost a decade after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1994.

Cementing Sherrill’s determination to be that leader was a WNYC report that broke just days after her campaign kicked off—one revealing that, in a fundraising letter to a local bank, Frelinghuysen had included a handwritten note targeting one of the bank’s employees for being part of a grassroots organization working to flip the district. (The woman later resigned from her job, citing “the pressure she received over her political involvement” as one of the reasons.) For Sherrill, hearing this news only strengthened her resolve.

“This was more than just a simple letter; it took forethought and planning,” Sherrill says. “It sends a message to his constituents that he doesn’t have their best interests at heart—that he doesn’t have their interests at heart at all.”

Sherrill sees a similar message in Frelinghuysen’s position on health care. Despite opposing House Speaker Paul Ryan’s first attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Actl, Frelinghuysen voted “yes” on Ryan’s revived health care bill—one that even Trump chided for being too “mean.”

Though the ACA repeal failed in the Senate, the American public—and the residents of District 11—have not forgotten what almost was. The legislation would have jeopardized coverage for maternity care, mental health treatment, and pre-existing conditions, among other things. But even if the Affordable Care Act remains in place, Sherrill realizes that it’s not perfect. She plans to work across the aisle to improve the marketplace and ease the burden for small businesses that struggle to provide health care for their employees.

If there’s one area where Sherrill refuses to compromise, it’s protecting Planned Parenthood. According to Planned Parent Action Fund of New Jersey, 90,000 women, men, and teenagers rely on the organization for care, with the Morristown facility seeing 4,000 patients in 2016 alone. Though Frelinghuysen said as recently as this past February that he supports Planned Parenthood and women’s reproductive freedom, his voting record seems to contradict his statements and he’s fallen in line with the GOP’s efforts to defund. (Frelinghuysen’s office did not respond to Glamour’s request for comment.)

“We have a congressperson who knows what his constituents support, and is something that he said he supported in the past, who once again caved to the administration,” Sherrill says. “He has not stood up against the bad agenda in Washington. Planned Parenthood is just another example of that.”

Sherrill’s campaign is not built solely on resisting Trump’s agenda. It’s about protecting the middle class, creating new jobs in burgeoning industries like solar and wind, investing in infrastructure projects to help grow the economy of her entire home state and recapturing that spirit of ingenuity she felt as a young girl.

“Growing up, I remember thinking anything was possible—and the history of my family kind of proves that,” Sherrill says. “This is a country that built the best middle class in the world. This is a country that provided career opportunities so women like my mom could get a good job. This is a country that made a young girl believe she could be a helicopter pilot in the navy.”

“America is a country that’s been built on innovation, drive, and a belief in the possibilities. We need to get back to that.”



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