In the news: L’Oréal Revitalift Repair 10 ad banned in the UK

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Saw this on Birchbox's blog page.

Another dispatch from the seemingly never-ending Photoshop debate. Britain’s Advertising Standard Authority has banned Rachel Weisz’s new ad for L’Oréal Revitalift Repair 10 due to, of course, too much photoshopping. 

Revitalift Repair 10, an anti-wrinkle cream, is marketed as helping to smooth and even one’s complexion. In a ruling yesterday, the ASA said that the ad “misleadingly exaggerated the performance of the product†and that Weisz’s face “had been altered in a way that substantially changed her complexion.†The committee has also asked L’Oréal to not use photoshopping techniques that substantially misrepresent a product’s effects from now on.

The Revitalift ad is the latest in a string of images that have been pulled by the ASA. Dakota Fanning and Hailee Steinfeld both had glossy pages banned for being “too provocative†given their age, and Christy Turlington’s recent Maybelline image and Julia Roberts Lancôme ad were pulled for a surplus of airbrushing.

L’Oréal responded to the ASA saying they “sought to represent Weisz as favorably as possible,†and accordingly photographed her with lots of light, in soft focus, and used low resolution. That is a lot of perking up for an image even before digital retouching, but doesn’t seem particularly unreasonable to us.

We’ve weighed in on the lengthy photoshop discussion before, mostly on the side of “too much digital retouching, indeed!†But looking at Weisz’s ad now, we’re beginning to wonder if maybe the ASA has gotten a bit overzealous in their crackdown. While Weisz’s skin is quite smooth, overall the image doesn’t seem quite as offensive to us as taking a model’s waist from a 27 to a 24, or amping up a chest from a B cup to a D cup.

What do you think? Did Rachel Weisz’s new ad need to be banned because it’s too misleading?

—Candice

For more posts about over-photoshopping, click here.
 
Sigh. These companies don't realize how stupid they look when they get called out for this. I would have much more respect for a company that didn't try to create an unrealistic portrayal of the performance of their products.

The ad in question:



 
L'Oreal's excuse for the ad was that it wasn't Photoshopped they just used the lights and low pixel resolution to get the image. Uh huh. Sure they did.

 
Here's the article Birchbox referred to in which L'Oreal claimed it was mostly lights and low resolution that gave the effect in the ad.

BeautyHigh article
Meanwhile, L'Oreal did admit to touching up the photo, as everyone knows that they do in all photos (and all brands and fashion magazines do). In a statement, they said, "The ad sought to represent Rachel Weisz as favorably as possible and therefore every effort had gone into ensuring the most flattering set-up. Rachel Weisz had been professionally styled and made-up and then lit and shot by a professional photographer in a studio setting. The photo was shot using a lot of light in order to make the picture more flattering and to reduce the appearance of imperfections in the ensuing image by giving the image a soft focus and lower resolution."

Photoshop or not, it's still misleading because the ad claim is was the use of the product that achieved the look of the model.

 

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