You Mean Ads Can't Stretch the Truth?

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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has just burrowed into L'Oreal's ass for the use of false eyelashes in an ad for its Telescopic Mascara, a product that promises to make your lashes "up to 60 percent longer."

The ad features Penelope Cruz, who sported the illicit hairs. According to the ASA, the ad should have made it clear that the actress was wearing falsies. L'Oreal claims this is "common industry practice" - just as, we imagine, all of these conventions are.

Since when are we playing Nazi to the (unrealistic?) appearance of stars in ads? If we're going to unleash the dogs, maybe we should first address the copy writers that come up with lines like, "Imagine, lashes that could reach for the stars."

by Angela Natividad    Jul-25-07   Click to Comment   
Topic: Celebrity, Commercials, Policy   

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Comments



Comments

Bullshit. This is false advertising, pure and simple. We're led to believe that the product is responsible for the lashes looking the way they do, which isn't the case.

If insisting that Loreal agree to a legal standard is Nazism, then I think I was reading the wrong history books.

Posted by: dutycalls on July 25, 2007 1:22 PM

One hopes that nobody actually believes your eyelashes will grow a whole inch thicker, just as one hopes nobody actually believes Neutrogena actually gives you Jennifer Love Hewitt's skin, just as one hopes nobody actually believes a McD's happy meal will make you an overall happier person.

And while we're tumbling down this slippery slope, let's ask ourselves whether buying Benetton actually makes us more worldly, or whether wearing Axe really does increase the likelihood that every chick you meet is going to fling herself at you in a lusty frenzy.

Better to save our battles for the big issues. Eyelash deceit just isn't one of them.

Posted by: Angela on July 25, 2007 2:35 PM

It says "a product that promises to make your lashes 'up to 60 percent longer'" and they show her with fake lashes on...implying that the mascara made her lashes look that way. To me, that is false advertising. If they are going to do that, they should at least mention it in the ad. Or at least stop selling the mascara and start selling the fake lashes. I know I have short, crappy lashes and no mascara is going to change that, but seeing ads like that always gives me a little bit of hope. I better just stick with the fake lashes.

Posted by: /// on July 25, 2007 4:22 PM

I would think it has to do about the integrity of the company. L"Oreal is researching stemcells and hair growth since the last millenium, and even evolution in it's laboratories.

Course we all stretch the truth to sell ourselves to the opposite or the attractive sex if we know which one that is according to our genes or our behaviour. Like i wear heals to look six feet so that I scare all the men away. Men like 5"5" redheads and blonds.

Posted by: nancy on July 25, 2007 4:59 PM

and all those beautiful manes of hair in the hair color/shampoo ads are real, too.

Posted by: brownrice on July 25, 2007 8:09 PM