There's a lot to get your goat about beauty advertising, I think. Celebrity endorsements of products particularly annoy me because so many of them are obviously a steaming pile of horse manure. Cheryl Cole's beautifully volumised hair? Oh yeah, it's all shampoo and nothing to do with the extensions. Jane Fonda's well-preserved skin? Oh yeah, it's all face cream and nothing to do with surgical enhancement. There are more I could name, but I think you know what I'm talking about.
The one I find the most seethe-makingly infuriating is mascara adverts. For years many mascara advertisers seemed to expect us to believe that one coat of their magical potion would really make our lashes look like the model's. The same model who anyone with an ounce of make-up nous could see was wearing false lashes, either a few individuals or a full on strip. This kind of false (geddit?) advertising used to drive me up the wall and the fact advertisers now have to admit the enhancement hasn't helped matters. It now seems lashes in adverts are even more amped up than before yet this is excused by the 'styled using lash inserts' disclaimer which now appears in an almost invisible font and point size at the bottom of the picture.
Little wonder then that when I saw the name of Maybelline's new mascara I took it as a personal challenge. Were Maybelline deliberately provoking me with their new 'The Falsies Volum' Express' (don't even get me started on the use of the word
Volum'). There was only one way to find out.
