Competition was especially steep this year for congressional gossip sheet The Hill's annual list of the "50 Most Beautiful People in D.C."—even Malia Obama got shut out. Can you ever be as beautiful as these residents of our nation's most beautiful city?

News arrives today that fancy gym Equinox is instructing all of its personal trainers to spend the next few weeks getting in extra-good shape, because the company is about to start making them wear fancy new "form-fitting tops" that will be unflattering to anyone with a stray millimeter of body fat. This is fantastic news, because it will cause the vain rich people who go to Equinox to select their personal trainers on the dumbest possible criteria.

Our photo of an Abercrombie manager's strident "styling" note in a break room brought forth a flood of reminiscences from commenters familiar with Abercrombie's hotties-only hiring policies. Our favorite, though, was this email from a regretful former Hollister manager.

We've written a lot lately on American Apparel's disturbing beauty-based hiring policy. Let us acknowledge: other retailers are similarly inclined. Take Abercrombie & Fitch, for example.

Yesterday, we told you about American Apparel's practice of making hires and promotions based largely on "full body" employee photos. We now have internal documents and photos detailing the policy—plus, former employees vent on life in AA's fashion dungeon.

Britons are the ugliest people in the world, at least according to the stupid dating website BeautifulPeople.com. (Not that we necessarily disagree, of course.) [Reuters, Telegraph]

If you see Mischa Barton on the street this weekend and she looks a little worse for the wear, and you strongly suspect her "toothache" has returned, go easy on her. The job that brought her to NYC last month—the CW show The Beautiful Life—was canceled today after just two episodes, making it the first victim of the fall television season. Like 10 percent of America, she's now unemployed. But she'll get by somehow, we imagine. [LA Times]

Pacing American Apparel CEO and full-grown adult Dov Charney is denying our tipster's report that he's been purging his stores of "ugly" employees. But hey, would it kill you ugly people to be fashionable, at least?

How did plain-jane Treasury Secretary Timmy Geithner make People's "Most Beautiful People" list? His brother works there. Yea WE FIGURED. Because they totally left out Larry Summers. [Business Insider]

Hopefully BBC America won't waste too much time before importing (newlywed!) Simon Doonan's TV series Beautiful People, based on his memoir about escaping from Reading, England to London, LA, and, finally, New York. The show, which is about to air in the UK is "just the most brilliant, hilarious thing that has ever happened to me," Doonan tells the Guardian. "It's the cherry on the cake of my tawdry existence!"

We’ve given Gwyneth Paltrow some flack lately for her sudden determination to vamp up her prim and proper image using everything from dominatrix footwear to bizarre backless jumpsuits but, with the need to promote Iron Man no longer an issue, the mother of Hollywood’s most promising cross-dressing duo is back to basics. And as it turns out, all those goopy mascara-drenched lashes and see-through mini-dresses pale in comparison to the makeup-free, covered up version of Gwyneth 1.0. In these photos, taken over the weekend at a party in the Hamptons, see why the Madonna make-out partner should give up the hooker heels for good and stick to (painful as it may be to admit) her lucky genetic makeup-free makeup: