L’Oreal group has just had two of their beauty campaign pulled of by British Advertising Standards Authority in UK as reported by The Guardian on 27 July 2011. The two beauty campaigns that were being pulled of are Lancome Teint Miracle and Maybelline Eraser Foundation featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington respectively.
Both Julia Robert and Christy Turlington are beautiful women who have aged gracefully. At their current age, sure they have fine lines but that’s what show their true age and that doesn’t look wrong at all. What’s wrong is that at their age, their image depicted on the beauty ad is impeccably flawless without a sign of fine lines, at all. To some degree a beauty campaign may need to be digitally manipulated to meet certain standard, but not to a degree where it seems to manipulate the age of the spokeperson. If naturally beautiful women such as Julia Robert and Christy Turlington need to be retouched as much as what shown on the beauty campaign, don’t you think this sends the wrong message to the public? That this is what women their age are supposed to be like?
On another note, if you see the beauty campaign with Christy Turlington below, it sends a different wrong message. It can be said that it is a misrepresentation of the product that they’re selling. It makes me believe that if I use this foundation, even if I have wrinkles, I can have a flawless complexion and this foundation can erase all imperfection in my face. If there’s such a product, I would have stock up just in case everyone else thinks the same thought as I am.
The campaign was being pulled off after complaints being lodged by the UK Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson who have long waged a campaign against “overly perfected and unrealistic images” of women in advertising. As cited from The Guardian “The ASA ruled that both ads breached the advertising standards code for exaggeration and being misleading and banned them from future publication.”
What do you think? Do you accept the fact that most beauty ads are digitally manipulated and to what degree should it be done?
