Two ads featuring Julia Roberts and model Christy Turlington have been banned in Britain.
Britain’s advertising standards council banned two makeup ads on Wednesday, ruling the ads, which used digitally altered photographs, were misleading.
The Advertising Standards Authority found that the airbrushed images used by L’Oreal in magazine ad campaigns exaggerated the results women could expect from using the beauty products. This will come as a shock to anyone familiar with beauty/makeup ads.
“Pictures of flawless skin and super-slim bodies are all around, but they don’t reflect reality,” said Jo Swinson, a lawmaker who brought the complaint. “With one in four people feeling depressed about their body, it’s time to consider how these idealized images are distorting our idea of beauty.”
The company admitted the photos were retouched, but said they’re not misleading, according to the BBC. Maybelline officials agreed, saying they don’t “believe that the ad exaggerates the effect that can be achieved using this product.”
But the decision was seen as a step forward in an ongoing campaign to limit the retouching of photos in beauty-related ads in Britain.
“We really welcome this,” said Susan Ringwood, chief executive of Beat, which campaigns to combat eating disorders. “It highlights one of the main issues, that these hyper-perfect versions of beauty are undermining people’s confidence because they are beyond what’s achievable. It’s unrealistic in a way that’s really damaging to vulnerable young people and effects all of us.”
Christy Turlington Burns was in Toronto Friday for the Canadian screening of her directorial debut of “No Woman, No Cry”.
The documentary film begins with Turlington Burns delivering her first child, a baby girl, with a midwife. But an hour after baby Grace’s birth in 2003, the placenta had not yet emerged which put her in serious danger.
The midwife and an obstetrician had to remove it from the wall of her uterus began to hemorrhage. Luckily, Burns survived the ordeal.
“I was fortunate to have survived the complication…but not everyone is.”
When Christy visited a village in El Salvador, where few women received adequate postpartum care, she realized she’d likely have died if she had given birth there.
“That was when I had my ‘aha’ moment, when I realized that this was going to be my cause,” said the former supermodel and mom.
No Woman No Cry brings light to the staggering statistics: a woman dies every 90 seconds from complications of pregnancy. More than 500,000 women die each year during childbirth. Ninety percent of these deaths are preventable.
I hope that by bringing people together through the universal experience of birth, we can help create a mainstream maternal health movement that ensures the lives and well-being of mothers worldwide, for generations to come,” she said.
As Turlington Burns narrates, the documentary film begins with footage of her own birth experience, filmed by her husband director Ed Burns. She takes us across the globe to Tanzania where we meet a woman who is overdue in her pregnancy and must walk eight kilometres to a health clinic while she’s in labour. She hasn’t eaten and can’t afford transportation to the nearest hospital.
The film moves to Bangladesh, where a health worker tries to encourage a young mother to give birth in hospital rather than at home, which is the norm in the country. Turlington Burns also covers the surprising statistics back in the United States, where one in five women of reproductive age who don’t have health insurance.
A U.S. father shares his painful story about losing his wife who bled to death from an amniotic fluid embolism. We visit a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, where a doctor talks about her frustration in her country’s cultural beliefs that don’t allow women to practice birth control.
Dr. Peter Singer, Christy Turlington Burns, Mary Tidlund and Karlee Silver (Photo: TNy Photography)
Dr. Peter Singer, chief executive officer of Grand Challenges Canada, invited Turlington Burns to showcase her film in Toronto. Grand Challenges Canada is a bold new approach to foreign aid that strives to transform global health through Integrated Innovation, and is hosted by the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health.
“All moms want the same thing in life – to educate your kids and feed your kids. If you can’t do that, you feel like a failure as a mom,” Turlington Burns said in a panel discussion after the film screening at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
Also on the panel were Mary Tidlund, The Mary A. Tidlund Charitable Foundation and Karlee Silver and McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health and Grand Challenges Canada.
“No Woman, No Cry”debuted on Oprah’s new network, OWN on May 7, 2011 in the U.S. It will be a part of the OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network Canada Documentary Club and will air on Sunday, May 22 at 7 p.m. ET in Canada.
Americans will spend approximately $14.6 billion this year on gifts for Mother’s Day, according to the National Retail Federation. Despite this celebration of motherhood, hundreds of thousands of women worldwide die during pregnancy and childbirth — 1 out of 5 moms die in the United States. The US ranks 50th in terms of maternal health care, meaning that 49 other countries provide better care.
Did you know?
• One maternal death every 90 seconds.
• 15% of all pregnancies result in complications during labor and delivery and sometimes are fatal.
• Pregnancy is the biggest killer of girls ages 15-19.
• For every woman who dies in childbirth, 20 more suffer from debilitating complications.
• We have the knowledge to prevent 90% of all maternal deaths.
Moms4Moms asks: what if 1% of that $14.6 billion could be given to this cause? Leveraging the power of social media, the group plans to raise awareness and funds for the organization Every Mother Counts.
Mom4Moms and mom and supermodel Christy Turlington’s Every Mother Counts are joining together to help this Mother’s Day.
How can YOU help? Visit “Moms4MomsDay” which focuses on two initiatives: micro-donating, which encourages everyone to give as little as $5, and old cell-phone donation through the group Hope Phones, which refurbishes old phones and donates the proceeds.
Moms4Moms, a movement started by Holly Pavlika, hopes to “really make Mother’s Day about moms” by promoting the allocation of at least some of the money spent on gifts to mothers in need.” Every Mother Counts is an advocacy and mobilization campaign to increase education and support for maternal and child health.
