Who said looks do not matter? French President Emmanuel Macron has proved that looks do matter, a lot, and that comes at a whopping price – €26,000 ($30,000). Macron has spent £8,000 a month from taxpayers' money on makeup services in his first three months in office.
On Thursday, the French magazine Le Point revealed Macron's monthly spending on just the makeup services and that prompted harsh criticism from social media users in France. Since taking charge as the president, the 39-year-old has cleared two bills of his personal makeup artist called Natacha M – one for €10,000 and another for €16,000.
After the criticism, his aides said that Natacha M's services "were used in an emergency" and in future, the cosmetic bills "would be significantly reduced."
"The sum covers various services including press conferences and foreign trips where the person concerned has to travel with him," one Elysée Palace official told journalists, according to The Guardian. The official accepted that the cosmetic bill was high, but he also said that it is less than what his predecessors spent.
But Macron is not the first French president to spend handsomely from taxpayers' money on his looks and appearances. Former French president Francois Hollande, a Socialist, paid € 9,895 per month to his hairdresser, Olivier Benhamou, for the duration of Hollande's five-year term, the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchainé reported in 2016.
Justifying the cost, the Elysée said that the "hairdresser had to get up early and fix the president's hair every morning … and as many times during the day as necessary."
Hollande's conservative predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, spent around €8,000 a month on his makeup artist for having his face done, Vanity Fair reported. Sarkozy was the French leader to hire a makeup artist and later Hollande followed the suit.
