Are They L’Oreal Thing?

After a hiatus induced by lots of moving around, I’m now back to blog once again.

The ASA has slapped the pert-and-pretty face of L’Oreal for faking the results of their mascara in a recent advert featuring the pert-and-pretty Penelope Cruz. Whilst the claim of making eyelashes appear up to 60% longer, as claimed by their advert, is ‘proven’ in their own consumer tests… Cruz was wearing false eyelashes whilst appearing in her latest adverts (print and television) for the make-up firm.

According to the Advertising Standards Authority’s investigation into the advert, “We noted from the lengthening study that 75% of subjects had a 60% increase or more in the visible length of their lashes when measured using digital imagery,” and that the Authority: “…noted L’Oreal’s belief that up to 60% longer lashes could be achieved irrespective of whether lashes were real or artificial.”

The national freesheet Metro quotes L’Oreal as responding with the time-honoured ‘no really, they do work, but just not when you want to film an advert’. They said: “It is common industry practice to make use of some artificial lashes in order to ensure a consistent lash line under filming or shooting conditions – the ASA had previously accepted on more than one occasion that this industry practice was not misleading.” L’Oreal confusingly sees it fit to accuse the ASA of being inconsistant.

Being the manly man that I am, I’m not make-up expert but I don’t see the point in buying fake lashes, just to make them look longer with mascara? Surely you’d just buy long lashes in the first place. Even with real eye lashes, the fact that the guinea pigs needed ‘digital imagery’ to notice the increase in visible length is quite worrying. How about we magnify your face a thousand times and put it on the side of a building – doesn’t it look much larger? The same applies in this case, I believe, unless those men you expect to be attracting with that mascara carry pocket ‘digital imaging’ devices around with them.

This does raise some more important questions, however. The very idea of make-up adverts featuring very beautiful women stating they sourced their looks from L’Oreal and other brands is quite misleading in itself. Who would hire an 18-year-old to advertise anti-ageing cream? But yet, hire any actor with naturally young looks whatever their age, and suddenly you find them attributing their beauty to a product which has only been released moments before the advert was output. It’s vulgar but true: you can’t polish a turd – but make-up adverts in their very essence set out to convince consumers that, whoever you are, you can magically look as beautiful as Penelope Cruz just with a dash of their product.

Or you could just fake it yourself, as this advert seems to prove.

-Daniel

P.S. Many apologies for the probably overused headline. It was just too tempting!