Lancome Visionnaire: Does it live up to its name?

While watching TV earlier today, I stumbled upon this advertisement for Lancome Visionnaire. The announcer, with a subdued French accent, proclaims how this treatment has prompted women to not undergo cosmetic surgery on their face. At first, I was enlightened by this. If this product can prevent women from undergoing unnecessary procedures, then I'm all for it. Yet I soon realized Lancome doesn't care if less women are getting cosmetic surgery. Instead, they target self conscious women who feel the need to alter their faces. Providing a product that will cost less than a cosmetic procedure sounds at first enticing. Despite this, the customer will most likely have to buy multiple bottles throughout her lifetime in order to maintain her "beautiful" face. Thus, their customers end up spending as much if not more money on their product as compared to a cosmetic procedure.

Another aspect that bothered me in the ad was the racial ambiguity. Towards the advertisement's conclusion, the announcer asserts that their product works for all skin colors. An image of four women popped up in the hopes to showcase all the different skin types their products can treat. While Lancome probably thought they were showing a wide spectrum of skin colors, I just saw three white women with basically the same fair skin tone and one black woman with relatively fair skin. This angered me for they didn't even try to represent the Latina community or darker skinned African Americans. So according to Lancome, beauty is defined by how white your skin is. The fairer the skin, the more beautiful you are. In such a culturally diverse country as America, this should not be advertised. In doing so, it decreases the confidence of African American and Latino communities.
Overall, this ad shows how narrow minded beauty is.