Two makeup ads in the UK have been caught retouching (what’s new there?) but this time, the ads have been banned for grossly exaggerating what the cosmetic products were capable of, a move that has many hoping this may end the era of unrealistic images being portrayed as the norm.
The ads in question were Lancome’s “Teint Miracle” featuring Julia Roberts and Maybelline’s “Eraser” featuring model Christy Turlington. Both Lancome and Maybelline are part of L’Oreal cosmetics.
The ads pulled for being too fake-“Pictures of flawless skin and super-slim bodies are all around, but they don’t reflect reality. Excessive airbrushing and digital manipulation techniques have become the norm, but both Christy Turlington and Julia Roberts are naturally beautiful women who don’t need retouching to look great.”- Jo Swinton
According to the Advertising Standards Authority in Britain, both the ads breached the advertising standards code for exaggeration and being misleading after Jo Swinson, a British MP who has frequently campaigned against unrealistic images in the media, complained to the advertising watchdog.
When faced with the accusation, L’Oreal responded that the alterations were not “directly relevant” to what the product could do, and furthermore that the images were “aspirational”. Instead of providing the ASA with the unretouched photos however, the company provided images of both stars on the red carpet to highlight that both were naturally beautiful (a step that fooled nobody into thinking that the images were only minimally retouched).
Jo Swinson hopes that the move will change the landscape of cosmetics advertising, shifting the focus away from unattainable perfection and instead driving advertisers “back to reality”.
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