Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.
I’m so inured to pharmaceutical advertising, it took my husband to point this one out to me: this Latisse spot may appear to be just another by-the-numbers pharma spot, but in fact it’s the greatest bad pharma spot ever. Let’s count the ways:
1) “The first and only approved FDA treatment for inadequate and not enough lashes,” “also known as hypotrichosis.”
Hypotrichosis has all the makings of a fake illness: enough of a medical basis to sound real (it’s a condition of “no hair growth”) and yet vague enough to invite creative interpretation. In December, the same month the FDA approved Latisse, someone at Allergan–the company that makes the drug–repeatedly tried to alter the Wikipedia entry of hypotrichosis to include eyelash hypotrichosis. Fortunately, Wikipedia moderators caught the changes and removed them (here and here).
2) Brooke Shields as spokesperson
In case it wasn’t perfectly clear that eyelash hypotrichosis is a fiction, we’re asked to believe that Brooke Shields–a woman with well over 30 years in modeling–isn’t pretty enough without this new drug for her lashes.
3) “May cause eyelid skin darkening, which may be reversible, and there is potential for increased brown iris pigmentation, which is likely permanent.”
Also “itchy eyes and eye redness” and, though the commercial never says it, the active ingredient in Latisse is also linked to optic nerve damage and blindness. Ok, so you get longer, dark lashes, but your eyes might turn brown, itchy, and useless.
4) “Full results in 12 to 16 weeks” and “If discontinued, lashes will gradually return to their previous appearance.”
So you have to wait four months for this stuff to work and as soon as you stop, you’re back to your old bald lids. It’s worth noting that the message about discontinuing Latisse appears only as text on screen at the same time that the voice-over lists side effects. The makers of this commercial are hoping to cram the drawbacks in as little space as possible to free you, the consumer, from reflection.
5) “Find a doctor at Latisse.com.”
Gee, I wonder what those doctors will think of Latisse…. Perhaps this serves a useful purpose, though: any dermatologist on here is probably one you’d want to avoid.