Rachel Weisz L’Oréal Ad Banned in Britain

For a local girl, Rachel Weisz sure just got the cold shoulder in London. L’Oréal Paris became the latest cosmetics company to run afoul of the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority, which deemed a print ad for Revitalift Clinical Repair 10 featuring the Oscar winner to be, well…not fit for print! Is it that racy? No, the L’Oréal ad didn’t get banned for the same reasons that highly stylised fragrance ads featuring Dakota Fanning and Hailee Steinfeld were outlawed. (Too provocative and supposedly romanticising suicide, respectively.) Instead, it was banned for the same reason that Lancôme ads starring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington were nixed.
Weisz is beautiful, for sure, but the ASA just couldn’t get behind the 41-year-old’s smooth-as-a-baby’s-bottom visage in ruling that the advertisement “misleadingly exaggerated” the product’s promised effect, as it was “heavily retouched”. Meanwhile, L’Oréal, which admits to touching up the photo, as it does all photos, is standing firm (no pun intended). “The ad sought to represent Rachel Weisz as favourably as possible and therefore every effort had gone into ensuring the most flattering set-up,” the Paris-based company said in a statement.
“Rachel Weisz had been professionally styled and made-up and then lit and shot by a professional photographer in a studio setting.” Although it’s hard to tell from looking at most magazines and billboards, this sort of anti-airbrushing campaign isn’t singular to the UK. Procter & Gamble voluntarily pulled a CoverGirl ad with Taylor Swift (who’s 22!) after the U.S.’ National Advertising Division deemed the ad too Photoshopped to be a reliable indicator of just how thick your lashes could get with NatureLuxe Mousse Mascara.