This week, Ellen DeGeneres was announced as the new face of CoverGirl. While I’m a big fan of the very out and very outspoken talk show host, I feel a little uneasy about where CoverGirl is really coming from with their latest cover girl choice. Without a doubt, DeGeneres is likable, quirky, relatable — heck, she’s even “easy breezy.” But hawking a major cosmetics brand? I don’t know. To me, it feels gimmicky and phony, like a marketing ploy, in the same way the Dove campaign for “real beauty” did. As it turned out, Dove airbrushed those real women into oblivion. I didn’t buy that Dove ever thought real women with real cellulite and real curves were really beautiful. Nor do I buy that CoverGirl really thinks Ellen is representative of their very airbrushed All-American girl image. I mean, it’d be one thing if she were a lipstick lesbian, but does Ellen even like makeup? Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn’t. But I’m willing to bet she’s not hung up on it. Color me cynical, but using unconventional beauty to sell products designed to bring women closer to the ideal standard of conventional beauty just seems disingenuous to me. So what do you think?
