Today's Evil Beet Gossip

L’Oreal Tattled On Natalie Portman

natalie portman dior mascara ad

L’Oreal UK cosmetics got all Mean Girls and tattled on Natalie Portman for her Dior ad. It isn’t that Ms. Portman had an exclusive contract for L’Oreal. It’s that L’Oreal, thinking of Dior as its competition, felt the need to get the ad pulled. And they found a way. They got in touch with U.K.’s Advertising Standards Agency and told them that Dior’s mascara ad is “misleadingly exaggerating the effects of the product.” And the ASA agreed. More from NY Mag:

Parfums Christian Dior said the ad had originally been intended to promote a lipstick, but that plans changed once they realized just how nice Natalie’s eyes looked. Post-shoot, the brand’s retouchers then got to work to “separate/increase the length and curve of a number of her lashes and to replace/fill a number of missing or damaged lashes, for a more stylised, uniform and tidy effect.”

The ASA found no fault with the image on its own, but said that the retouching meant buyers could have had unrealistic expectations when juxtaposed with the ad’s claims of providing “an unrivalled lash creator effect” and a “spectacular volume-multiplying effect” … even though they didn’t, it would seem. And so the ad can’t be published again until sufficient clarifications are made.

L’Oreal UK is being SO Regina George about this. Seriously. It’s like that scene in Mean Girls when Gretchen freaks out over not being able to wear her silver hoop earrings because Regina also has silver hoop earrings and she wants to be the only one wearing them.

3 CommentsLeave a comment

  • Loreal should have a non compete clause with celebs preventing them from representing their competitors not resort to sneaky tricks. simple

    • Exactly. Don’t want her doing ads for rivals? Get her to sign a contract to that effect. It’s not complicated. #yayformarkets