Last week Kourtney Kardashian – yes, that Kourtney Kardashian – headed to Washington, D.C., to advocate for cosmetic regulation on Capitol Hill. The eldest Kardashian sister attended a meeting at the Russell Senate Office Building with Ken Cook, the president of the Environmental Working Group, a bipartisan non-profit that has long supported cosmetic regulation in the United States.

(We had our own chance to meet members of Congress just last week, but somehow TMZ wasn’t quite as interested!)

At the hearing, Kardashian spoke about the need for updated cosmetic regulation laws, both to ensure consumer safety and to help support manufacturers in the personal care and cosmetic industries.

“It would be nice if there were laws to regulate, so that the people running these businesses can have some standards of what to use,” Kourtney said, according to the transcripts shared in an article at The Cut.

FDA oversight – overdue?

The last U.S. cosmetic regulation law was passed in 1938. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (typically abbreviated as FD&C, FFDCA, or FDCA), gives authority to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to oversee the safety of food, drugs, and cosmetics. Specifically for cosmetics, this means the FD&C is intended to prevent “adulterated or misbranded” products from reaching the market. However, the FD&C does not require cosmetic products and ingredients, other than color additives, to have FDA approval before they go on the market. Instead, these products are regulated by the FDA.

The latest potential update to cosmetic regulation came about in 2016, when Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Susan Collins proposed the Personal Care Products Safety Act, which would give the FDA increased authority to regulate beauty products. During her brief, but well-documented time on Capitol Hill, Kourtney Kardashian spoke about the proposed Personal Care Products Safety Act.

“Everybody should have the right to healthy products. So that’s why I wanted to come here and make it a bigger deal,” Kardashian said, according to transcripts shared with Racked.

The Personal Care Products Safety Act.would create several changes to current cosmetic regulation. Notably, the act would require cosmetic companies to include complete product ingredient information on both physical labels and online. Additionally, under the proposed act, the FDA would be required to evaluate a minimum of five ingredients per year for safety.

The FDA would also have the ability to order cosmetic products recalls, which the agency cannot currently do. Finally, under the proposed bill, the FDA could issue regulations on Good Manufacturing Practices for cosmetic, beauty, and personal care products.

Dozens of industry leaders, including Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Estée Lauder, L’Oréal,the Honest Company, Juice Beauty, and Revlon have publicly shown their support for the bill, along with consumer health organizations like the American Cancer Society and the March for Dimes. Echoing Kourtney Kardashian’s statements, it seems many cosmetic industry manufacturers wouldn’t mind seeing consistent, fairly-applied federal regulation.

Keeping up with the Kardashians (in cosmetics)

Kourtney’s advocacy for cosmetic regulations should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been keeping up with the ever expanding Kardashian-Jenner cosmetic empire. The Kardashian-Jenner clan is so well known for their mega-popular makeup and cosmetic lines, and their subsequent Internet-breaking product launches, they have been referred to as being on a “mission of total domination of the makeup industry.”

“Everybody should have the right to healthy products. So that’s why I wanted to come here and make it a bigger deal.”

Kourtney Kardashian

Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics line is projected to make $1 billion USD by 2022. Kim Kardashian’s direct-to-consumer makeup and perfume lines, KKW Beauty and KKW Fragrance, both had products sell out within hours. Khloe is the next sister to get into the game, recently trademarking “KOKO Kollection by Khloe Kardashian” and “KOKO Kollection” for a cosmetic line. And, most recently, Kourtney Kardashian and Kylie Jenner’s highly anticipated Kourt X Kylie makeup collection, debuted mere hours after Kourtney’s time on the Hill.

As we keep seeing skyrocketing growth for the beauty, personal care, and cosmetic products markets, the conversation around government regulations and consumer demands for what are perceived as healthy, “green” and renewable ingredients and products will pick up steam. So it’ll become part of more and more corners of life and the media – even our reality television shows.