14 DAY TRIAL // Taylor Swift is, as her fans must already know, the latest face of CoverGirl. You might think she's ideal for the job but the people at Procter & Gamble would disagree: one ad for CoverGirl has just been discontinued for being too Photoshopped.
Various media watchdogs in the UK are constantly fighting for more honesty in beauty ads and magazines, and the latest hoopla around the Taylor Swift and CoverGirl is to be explained by this initiative.
Billboard reports that one in particular draw the eye of the National Advertising Division (NAD), for the NatureLuxe Mousse Mascara.
It shows Taylor striking a very seductive pose: she has perfect skin and, as expected, she has very long and thick eyelashes.
The print on the ad boasts that the CoverGirl mascara can guarantee “2X more volume,” but a small print at the bottom of it says that, “Lashes enhanced in post production.”
The NAD asked Procter & Gamble, CoverGirl's parent company, to provide irrefutable proof that their mascara could, indeed, boost the volume of eyelashes to the extent they claimed it would.
Instead of doing just that, the company pulled the ad altogether, issuing a statement to say that they may have been wrong when putting out the misleading Taylor Swift picture.
“Upon receiving the inquiry from the NAD, P&G discontinued the advertisement in question. The NAD has deemed our intervention as accurate and proper. We have always been committed, and we continue to be committed, to featuring visuals and claims that accurately represent our products' benefits,” the company says, as per Billboard.
The NAD sees the move as a cowardly one on part of Procter & Gamble: they should have just apologized.
“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 director Andrea Levine says in a separate statement.