Kourtney Kardashian Visits Congress to Discuss Cosmetics Safety Reform
Kourtney Kardashian is sick of waiting for change in the cosmetics industry, so she sat down with congressional leaders to see if she could help make it happen. Like so many of us in the beauty community, she wants to see products that are cleaner, safer, and more highly regulated, and believes that it's high time that the government steps in and does something about it.
On Tuesday, Kourtney visited the nation's capital to attend a briefing with the Environmental Working Group to talk about product reform in the self-care and cosmetic industry. Congress hasn't passed any new regulations in over 80 years. The proposed Personal Care Products Safety Act — which Kourtney was in D.C. to discuss — 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," Glamour reports.
"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," Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs at EWG, explained during the briefing, per Glamour. "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."
According to the magazine, the bill already has the support of a number of beauty companies including biggies like Procter & Gamble, Revlon, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, and smaller brands like Juice Beauty, EO, and Vapour Beauty.
As Keeping Up With the Kardashians fans know, Kourtney is deeply committed to an organic lifestyle, so it's no surprise that she would be passionate about helping to create a cleaner beauty industry. In the meeting, she mentioned that becoming a mother inspired her to think twice about the products she was using, both on herself and on her children.
“As a mom, you really take so much interest in the products… and it’s so crazy. I was thinking about it this morning. I would get so many baby gifts and a lot of it were products, skincare products for my kids,” she said, as reported by People at the briefing. “And I would use the things that people sent me just assuming these are baby products and that they should be safe. I remember learning from my mom friends that these were not healthy at all.”
She says she was shocked to find that a lot of the ingredients in the kids' products were unsafe and even toxic. And though she tries to keep up with what's "OK" and what's not in products she and her kids use, she doesn't always have the time to read every ingredient on every label. "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."
It's not just her kids who have her concerned. During the briefing, she told a story about how her professional stylist had been using some of the best products available on her hair, and neither one of them realized that they were full of chemicals. "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."
Because of this, she notes how important it is for Congress to step up to the plate and fix things in the industry as a whole so that people aren't left worrying abut everything they put on their bodies. "Even going into a store to buy just about anything … you shouldn’t have to walk around aimlessly asking, ‘Is this OK?’, ‘Is this not OK?’" she said. Everybody should have the right to healthy products. I do feel like it’s time for Congress to do its job."
When asked about her sisters' cosmetic lines — that would be (Kylie Jenner's Kylie Cosmetics and Kim Kardashian's KKW Beauty) — she didn't go into detail concerning the specific ingredients in their products: "I am from a beauty family," she said. "And so my sisters’ products have been checked by EWG and they scored well." Furthermore, she elaborated that, "Those are their companies... 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."
Despite all of the "Kourtney Kardashian Takes Kongress" headlines that have come about as a result of Kourtney Kardashian's day in D.C., her involvement in making the beauty industry a safer space is no joke. She's brought a massive level of attention to the Personal Care Products Safety Act, and ignited a bigger conversation about why we should be asking for better quality control in our products.
Related:The Personal Care Products Safety Act Proposes Changes for Beauty Industry
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