On Friday, November 21st, my group and I went to meet went to the L’Oreal advertising center to meet with the Executive Creative Director of L’Oreal, Martha Brooks who is also a parent at LREI. When we got there she showed us around her office. When we first walked in there was a wall that had printouts of the products being shown in September, October, and November issues of magazines. Martha had us stop at one of her employees desks to have a watch a video campaign for a new hair product L’Oreal is putting out, called Feria. She took us to a conference room where she has many printouts of real and photoshopped photos. She talked to us about L’Oreal’s motto and how they don’t photoshop their models to death. She told us that the celebrities that are higher up and more important get a say on what they look like in the photo before it gets put in magazines. Models that they hire get no say on whether they like the photo or not. Since Martha runs L’Oreal in the USA they have to make sure that the ads that are being shown in france look very close to the ones being shown in the USA. There is a law now that makeup companies in the US can’t use fake lashes on models when they have them modeling make up. In  many other countries this law isn’t in place. Since L’Oreal is mainly in New York and France the people in  France put false lashes on their models so that the mascara looks better. The people making the ad in the US have to use the mascara and try and make the eyelashes look like the false ones. This fieldwork really got my group thinking. We thought that every company photoshopped their models like crazy but when we saw the real and photoshopped photos of the models, we saw a difference but we could still tell it was them. Brooks kept talking about how she thought it was horrible how women are portrayed and how they are treated. She also hates how Victorias Secret photoshops their models. Girl want to look like exactly like the Angels because they are “angels” and they are “perfect.” This interview really left me with a lot of questions. I really would like to know:

What companies actually photoshop their models to death?

What those companies thoughts on photoshop and the “perfect” girl?

Why they photoshop the models?

Do they ever feel guilty?