Fallacies in Advertising it Has Been More

Fallacies in Advertising

It has been more than twenty years since a relatively unknown actress named Julia Roberts stole every scene in the sleeper hit Mystic Pizza. She charmed audiences with beautiful brown eyes, a wild mop of dark hair and a smile that lit up the screen. Some of her co-stars continued their Hollywood success, most notably Vincent D'Onofrio, who stars in Law and Order: Criminal Intent. No one enjoyed success like Roberts, however; she is an Oscar winner, a top box office draw, and considered by many to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. Now forty-two, she recently signed on with Lancome Paris to become the face of their beauty products.

In an ad featured in O, The Oprah Magazine (2011, p. 19), a radiant Roberts is the subject of a close-up portrait. Her hair is blonde, silky and simply styled. She wears modest earrings and a white blouse that is open at the throat. Roberts' eyes are beautifully made up and she looks directly at the reader. With pale lip gloss and a slight smile, Roberts is stunning in a way that appears effortless. Any woman can look like this with our product, the ad seems to say.

Roberts is advertising Lancome's Teint Miracle. The use of the French word for "tint" gives the product added cache, trading on the stereotype of the ultra chic Parisienne. The make-up promises a miracle. It is not enough to have a "flawless finish." The ad implies that using Teint Miracle will make anyone look like Julia Roberts. Using the make-up might let us experience what it is like, if just for a few moments, to be Julia Roberts: a happily-married mother of three who gets to go to work in the most glamorous of professions, working with actors such as George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem. Who would not want to be Julia Roberts?

Intellectually, we know that Teint Miracle will not make our skin flawless. Even Julia Roberts' skin is not flawless in real life, but photographed for the ad in the most flattering light and airbrushed so that she does not have any lines or wrinkles at all. Roberts is both youthful and beautiful, but she has lived and laughed for forty-two years.