Covergirl Mascara Ad Banned For Excessive Photoshopping

Another makeup company is being raked over the coals, this time for digitally manipulating a models eyelashes to make them look longer. The trouble is, it's for CoverGirl's Natureluxe Mousse Mascara which claims the product will create "2x more volume". Granted the ad apparently did mention at the very bottom, in small print, that the model's eyelashes had indeed been Photoshopped, but who reads all those disclaimers? Certainly not those of us who have to drag out our magnifying glasses to read labels that over the years have gotten increasingly smaller. And if it's a television ad, forget it.

The U.K. recently banned a Julia Robert's Lancome ad, along with a Christy Turlington Maybelline ad, for  misleading consumers.  This time the U.S. is jumped on the banning bandwagon, and out goes the CoverGirl Natureluxe campaign. Industry watchdog, and part of the Better Business Bureau- the National Advertising Division (NAD), decided to ban the ad.

As a result, Proctor and Gamble (owners of CoverGirl Cosmetics) claims it pulled all misleading ads, and NAD seems to be satisfied.

Women spend thousands of dollars a year trying to get that flawless model-perfect complexion and those extra long lashes; obviously an impossible task, and a major waste of money, since neither can those models.

There's a major difference between portrait photographers digitally manipulating a model's face for the artistic merits, but it's not okay for ad campaigns to claim something works when it clearly doesn't.


Photo Credit: Jezebel.com

NAD director Andrea Levine told Business Insider: 'You can’t use a photograph to demonstrate how a cosmetic will look after it is applied to a woman’s face and then – in the mice type – have a disclosure that says "okay, not really." 'NAD was particularly troubled by the photograph of the model – which serves clearly to demonstrate (i.e., let consumers see for themselves) the length and volume they can achieve when they apply the advertised mascara to their eyelashes.'