Two ad campaigns starring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington have been pulled by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over allegations that the stars had been overly airbrushed.
The ASA claims the ads - which were for L'Oréal subsidiary brands Lancome and Maybelline "breached the advertising standards code for exaggeration and being misleading" - and prohibited the company using them in further publication.
L'Oreal claimed that Turlington's ad "accurately illustrated" the results of the product the ad was promoting, but admitted that the image had been "digitally retouched to lighten the skin, clean up makeup, reduce dark shadows and shading around the eyes, smooth the lips and darken the eyebrows".
The cosmetics giant also said that digital retouching on Robert's photo, but said the changed were "not directly relevant" and said the photo should be looked upon as "aspirational".
The ASA said of the decision to ban the ads: "On the basis of the evidence we had received we could not conclude that the ad image accurately illustrated what effect the product could achieve, and that the image had not been exaggerated by digital post-production techniques."
