Photo credit: Brendan Kownacki
Say it anyway you like – bella, guapa, bonita – The Hill’s “In the Know” columnist Judy Kurtz says beautiful this way – “Beautiful is our 2017 50 Most Beautiful list,” she told Hollywood on the Potomac at the WeWork facilities in downtown Washington, DC who sponsored the event. “We had hundreds upon hundreds of nominees — a record-breaking amount — vying for a spot on our 14th annual list. The competition was stiff but The Hill’s staff managed to whittle down the contenders to come up with our 50 winners.” Each year, The Hill’s staff puts in an almost year long search for the ’50 Most Beautiful’ sifting through scores of peer recommendations and whittles it down to 50 from nearly 500 submissions. So how do you get on the list and what does it feel like when you do? Apparently you can nominate yourself, bribe a friend or just rely on luck. “There’s no secret sauce,” claimed Kurtz. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder — and The Hill staff. As you can see from our crop of ’50 Most Beautiful’ winners, beauty runs the gamut and the political spectrum! We shook things up a little this year, and the list features the ’50 Most Beautiful’ un-ranked and in alphabetical order.” Billed as The Hill’s 14th annual list — which celebrates the breathtaking beauties and stunning studs on Capitol Hill and beyond — “is back and more gorgeous than ever.”
We’ve chatted with many winners over the years: “50 Most Beautiful has become a fun summer tradition in this town,” former list winner Neil Grace told us. “Right when DC turns into a swamp (we swear, no pun intended) in July and August, The Hill’s list makes everyone feel just a little bit cooler. It’s always great to celebrate those who get the nominations. I was certainly surprised when I got the call,” said Grace, The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spokesman. “I’m used to getting calls from reporters on tough policy or tech issues, so this was a fun one and definitely a fun item for summer in Washington. It’s a nice nod after living and working in DC for more than eleven years – and I’m clearly in good company with some friends on the list.”
Nikki Schwab and Neil Grace
The Hill’s Editor in Chief Bob Cusack also explained the process for the nominations for which he gives credit to his staff. He has been enthusiastically running the show for some years now and he has always given us a good definition of the planning process over the years. “We started this list in 2004 and it’s a list that everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to get on……law-makers, congressional staffers, journalists. A lot of the staff gets involved to make the nominations and we get a lot of opinions from them as to what is beautiful. I think it’s really impossible to define beautiful because everybody has their own opinion; so that’s why we’ve set up the process where we take nominations and get a lot of people’s opinions of what beauty is which you know is a cliche, but it truly is in the eye of the beholder,” he explained to us.
Bob Cusack
“We just keep getting bigger and bigger every year,” he added, “so it takes more time to go through five hundred people. You look at the list, you whittle it down, you do some photo shoots, and that’s when the voting internally happens.” He also explained that they do photo shoots before the decisions are made. They don’t do all five hundred of course so it is at the discretion of the editor. “We will say ‘okay, we’re going to do X amount,’ whether that’s one hundred, or a little more than a hundred. Then we have the voting where the entire staff will get some donuts and everybody has fun. We tell people ‘okay, listen, to be considered we’ve got to do the photo shoot’ and those people feel like they’ve made it past a certain round, so they feel pretty good. And the thing is, if they don’t make the final fifty, they can make it the following year. That has happened before. “For more than a decade, ‘50 Most Beautiful’ has given Washington a rare opportunity to enjoy the glamour, humor, and plain fun behind all the daily seriousness of this city. “So, I just wanted to give a toast to everybody who made the cut and if you didn’t make the cut, get your beauty rest and maybe you’ll make it next year. Thank you all for coming. Please enjoy the beverage of your choice tonight. We have beer, wine and for members of the Trump administration, we are offering Moscow mules.”
