Truth or Falsies?

In the greater scheme of things, the truth -- or lack thereof -- of a cosmetics advertisement doesn't rank very high.

Especially when most of us know how faked they are, Photoshopped to the nth degree. I buy / use cosmetics and not since I was 13 or thereabouts have I thought, If I use that brand of mascara, I'll look exactly like that gorgeous model.

But still.

Today's New York Times carries an article by Andrew Adam Newman about the truth (or lack thereof) of mascara ads. For those of you who aren't regular cosmetics buyers: mascara ads all look alike. They all have close-up photographs of impossibly beautiful women (almost all Caucasian), with amazing eyelashes. Then they have technobabble about the new highly-engineered applicator or the new mascara formulation to assure you that you will have the fattest, longest, darkest lashes ever.

But the most important part of the picture is that all the women in these ads have lash extensions (aka falsies). It's not physically possible to get that batwing look without them. Most mascara ads get around this vexing little problem with tiny type at the bottom of the ad along the lines of "model styled with lash inserts".

Me, I hate small type. I know it's where the important stuff is hidden, and I hate having to hunt for it. (One of the few things I remember from my business-school accounting classes is: Always read the footnotes; that's where the important stuff lives.)

Newman's article is a follow-up on a decision issued in September by the National Advertising Division (NAD) that Maybelline needed to 'fess up, in the body of the ad, about their use of false lashes in advertisements for "Volum' Express the Rocket" mascara. The company could, NAD decided, continue to claim such important qualities as "8X Bigger. Smoother. Even." but the lash extensions either had to be peeled off or acknowledged. (Click here for the NAD press release) Maybelline is appealing the NAD decision to the National Advertising Review Board.

This isn't the first time, as Newman points out, that mascara ads have gotten a, you should pardon the expression, black eye. For example, in 2011, Procter & Gamble agreed to pull an ad for a CoverGirl brand mascara whose model's lashes had been "enhanced" in post-production.

But my favorite quote from the article is from NAD director Andrea Levine, who said simply, "What the big type says, the small type can't take away."

If you think about it, those are words for all of us to live by.