'Pictures ... don't reflect reality'

[tom b]

A series of L'Oreal advertisements featuring Hollywood star Julia Roberts and supermodel Christy Turlington have been banned in Britain for being overly airbrushed.

Read more here.

Cheers,

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Good to hear.

I wish there would be something similar, providing oversight for "truth in advertising" for politicians ;-) Their grasp of reality is often far more damaging than Photoshop.

[Steve Weldon]

Geez.. it's a make up company.. someone expected reality?  Really?   

[Abdullin]

*lol*

Are they gonna ban other retouched pictures, and show every single blemish?

[kaelaria]

I think it's a damn good start.  I wish the industry was regulated like the FDA.  Right now it's no different than the turn of the 19th century where every snake-oil was sold to cure everything.

Print ads right now take advantage of young moldable minds and turn them in to the older stupid minds that expect the unobtainable results shown as normal.  Stopping the brainwashing and actually educating young women (mostly) this way will really go a long way to improving things IMO.

My wish is in a couple generations kids will look back on history and think - what kind of morons watched Jerseylicious and thought it was entertaining?  LOL

[feppe]

My wish is in a couple generations kids will look back on history and think - what kind of morons watched Jerseylicious and thought it was entertaining?  LOL

I'm afraid all signs point to a future more like an Idiocracy. Then again, that has been a common lament since (at least) Socrates.

[Chairman Bill]

Geez.. it's a make up company.. someone expected reality?  Really?   

The point is UK advertising has to conform to certain standards, and presenting heavily touched up photos alongside claims to the efficacy of the products, are somewhat misleading. It's as if the photos are saying, 'Look at this; you could look like this too if you use this product', and that is misleading.

[Steve Weldon]

The point is UK advertising has to conform to certain standards, and presenting heavily touched up photos alongside claims to the efficacy of the products, are somewhat misleading. It's as if the photos are saying, 'Look at this; you could look like this too if you use this product', and that is misleading.

I get the point, I just can't take them seriously when they do this with a makeup company.  What's the difference between makeup removing blemishes or Photoshop removing them?  Isn't that one of the major features of makeup, to remove/hide/blend/touchup blemishes?  It's like they're trying to make us laugh.. who expects reality with makeup?

If they're truly trying to get rid of "you could look like this too" advertising, then they'd better put fat people on the treadmills and exercise machines, in the latest fashions, and stop hiring attractive people.. because 99% of society will never come close to looking like that.

[wolfnowl]

I think it's great.  Things like Michael stating 'full disclosure' at the beginning of an article about a new piece of equipment he's tested doen't undermine his knowledge or experience for example and I don't expect him to be 'bought'.  I've noticed the 'Dove' dish soap commercial on TV now has a note saying that they didn't douse animals with oil to show how effectively they're being cleaned with this soap, and there's another commercial for ___ where there's a subtitle that states the woman is an actor and not a professional photographer (as she claims in the ad).  A little truth never hurt.

Mike.

[feppe]

I think it's great.  Things like Michael stating 'full disclosure' at the beginning of an article about a new piece of equipment he's tested doen't undermine his knowledge or experience for example and I don't expect him to be 'bought'.  I've noticed the 'Dove' dish soap commercial on TV now has a note saying that they didn't douse animals with oil to show how effectively they're being cleaned with this soap, and there's another commercial for ___ where there's a subtitle that states the woman is an actor and not a professional photographer (as she claims in the ad).  A little truth never hurt.

Dove has been using that slant in their advertising for at least 5 years.

[BernardLanguillier]

Educate kids with values other than greed and all the rest will follow! :-)

Cheers,
Bernard

[tom b]

Here's another classic.

Cheers,

[Chairman Bill]

I get the point, I just can't take them seriously when they do this with a makeup company.  What's the difference between makeup removing blemishes or Photoshop removing them? 

The products weren't make-up as such, but so-called 'rejuvenating' lotions & potions, claimed to make skin younger looking & so on.

[Steve Weldon]

The products weren't make-up as such, but so-called 'rejuvenating' lotions & potions, claimed to make skin younger looking & so on.

I was reading more on this story.. very interesting.  The ASA wanted them to submit 'before/after' images which Julia Roberts contract (and most other professional models) prohibits.. so the ASA probably didn't like that.   The photographer supposedly used lighting designed to reduce the apparent wrinkles.  Sure, this is why flat lighting is most often used for this sort of photography (and why god invented 8 foot octoboxes)

So.. the ASA wanted to see the before/after.  What good would this do?  Will they then want before/after from when the MUA's do their work?  Is so much "wrinkle removal" acceptable from MUA's, but not retouching?  Isn't this an artistic choice the government is trying to get involved in? 

I really think the ASA stuck their foot in it and could have picked much better examples to exercise their power.  I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out there's some juicy backstory to all this..

[JakeD]

Maybe the advertising standards people took the view that this was wrong in as much that the product that they were selling to make you look better wasn't the product that was actually used to make the improvement in the ad. That's quite misleading.

[EduPerez]

Some time ago there was a campaign running around here, about a cosmetics product that could do miracles after a seven-day treatment; such ads showed the typical "before & after" pictures, to prove the efficacy of the product. Admirably, for the second photograph they managed to place each hair in the model's head in the same exact location that it was during the first photograph... that, or both images where different retouchings of the same photograph.

[tom b]

Video on the subject here.

Cheers,

[tq-g]

A job well done.

By the ad agency.

[felix5616]

I was told this long ago, "Belive half of what you see and nothing that you hear "
Truth and honesty are fading fast, perpetuated by people/societies/organizations that truely believe the percertion is reality.
I assume that everything we hear and see today is manipulated by the media, to present to the public their own view of the world, a severly distorted and unrealistic view.

[Dward]

Pictures....don't reflect reality.

I wonder if we should ban Botticelli's Birth of Venus?   Have you ever seen a woman with a neck like that?  Or such a shoulder, or arms quite that long?   Speaking of indoctrinating girls with a distorted image of the female body....

Damned artists, always abstracting instead of just reflecting.

David V. Ward, Ph. D.
www.dvward.com
David V. Ward Fine Art Photography