L’Oréal has been forced to pull ad campaigns featuring Julia Roberts and supermodel Christy Turlington, after the advertising watchdog upheld complaints by MP Jo Swinson that the images were overly airbrushed.
Swinson has waged a long-running campaign against “overly perfected and unrealistic images” of women in adverts, and lodged complaints with the Advertising Standards Authority about magazine campaigns for L’Oréal-owned brands Lancôme and Maybelline.
The ASA requested a copy of the original photo of the Julia Roberts pic in order to compare it to the one in the ad, but they were denied, as Roberts has a clause in her contract that doesn’t allow the release of untouched photos. It is sad to think of a beautiful, talented women like her having a clause like that.
The ASA ruled: “On the basis of the evidence we had received, we could not conclude that the ad image accurately illustrated what effect the product could achieve, and that the image had not been exaggerated by digital post-production techniques. We therefore concluded the ad was misleading.”
The ASA ruled that both ads breached the advertising standards code for exaggeration and being misleading and banned them from future publication. The ad was found to have breached advertising standards codes 3.1 (Misleading advertising) and 3.11 (Exaggeration).
Lancôme admitted the image had been altered using “a soft focus and lower resolution,” but stated in their defense that Julia, 43, is famous for her “naturally healthy and glowing skin.”
What do you think of these before and after shots? Both women are stunningly beautiful- I think the airbrushing is ridiculous, wouldnt it be better to see the actual results from the product?
Keeping Beautiful 
This is very interesting I didn’t know that things were this far mis leading to start with when the company has built themselves up in years it silly to mis lead that bad .I know allot of touch ups are done but never imaged to this degree but being I have graphic knowledge I can see allot of over done touch ups so I am glad someone is going to bat for us out here o n products.Thanks for sharing I will pass this on in my blogs ect..
Maybe she’s born with it!!! Maybe it’s make believe!!!!
I definately am glad they pulled the advertisements. I hate looking at an advert for mascara and then seeing small print tell me that the photo was shot with lash inserts and was edited too. What’s the point? Then I’m never going to be satisfied with the result of the product because the advertisement showed me otherwise.
They need to do it more but it is a shame Julia Roberts has that clause too =/