Appearing Monday on Sean Hannity's radio show, the Republican congresswoman – who will run for the Senate next year – was questioned about her image problems from 2000.

"I'm actually very sensitive about those things, and it's personally painful," she said.

"But they're outrageously false, number one, and number two, you know, whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph."

She didn't explain what she meant by "colorized" – or say which paper or papers did the colorizing.

When asked about the claim the following day, she said through spokesman Adam Goodman, "I haven't worn blue eye shadow since the seventh grade when I was in the Girl Scouts."

Manipulating an image in any form is not allowed by The Associated Press, AP national deputy photography director David Ake told the Tampa Tribune.

Ake was AP photo editor in Florida in 2000 "and I can tell you we did no manipulation whatever," he said.

Goodman charged that the makeup issue was "unfair" and said Harris was victimized by her gender.

"The only reason this was made a caricature building around cosmetics was because she was a woman."

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