It wasn’t with shock but with relief that The Scrapbook greeted the news that a Washington tradition is coming to an end: “After nearly 15 years, The Hill is bidding a beautiful bye-bye to its annual 50 Most Beautiful list.”
Described by its creators as “an extraordinarily popular summertime tradition in Washington” (really?), the list was a yearly effort to highlight the handsome and bewitching faces of a town commonly known as “Hollywood for ugly people.” But with rich and powerful men across the nation being revealed as wanton sexual aggressors, it was no longer thought appropriate to celebrate the Swamp’s lovelier creatures. “We felt the list had run its course,” one list editor explained.
According to the Washingtonian, each year staffers at the The Hill chose from among “hundreds upon hundreds of D.C. hopefuls,” including appealing Capitol Hill staffers, comely K Street lobbyists, and photogenic members of the press corps and White House staff. Most years featured a few courtesy wins: President Obama made the list in 2005 when he was a senator, and both Melania and Ivanka Trump earned spots on the list last year.
The capital’s version of the beauty pageant was about as stupid and vacuous as one might imagine when disclosing its winners’ nonphysical attributes. Unlike the more rigorous Miss America or Miss Universe pageants, there was no talent component to the competition, which is why the winners rarely came across as introspective. Hunter King, a Capitol Hill staffer who made the list in 2017, made sure to mention that he “doesn’t rely on hair gels or sprays” for his unique look and said, “My co-workers say I’m one of a kind. . . . Like a fountain, not a drain.”
Charming.
Such preening is perhaps why the death of the list, which the Washington City Paper once called D.C.’s best “hate read,” sparked a few impromptu Twitter obituaries by journalists. Politico reporter Elana Schor tweeted, “Genuinely sad about this. The comedic opportunities were always gold.” But the most poignant response to the news came from Sen. Orrin Hatch, who no doubt spoke for many Washington wallflowers when he tweeted: “You wake up every day to comb your hair and pick out the brightest shirt/tie combo with your strongest pinstripe suit thinking this is going to be the year . . . then this happens.”
