Britain Calls Shenanigans On Katy Perry And Justin Bieber’s Proactiv Ads

When you’re a pop artist, you’re eventually faced with two choices: endorse some questionable crap, or be tossed into the dread hinterlands of musical coverage, where your only radio play comes from a dingy Fisher-Price kids’ toy and you’re forced to feed on your unsold albums for sustenance. (OK, we’re exaggerating. On the latter.)

Some endorsements make sense, though. Cosmetic endorsements make sense, considering how much of the stuff artists use. Skin care products make sense–particularly if you’re Katy Perry, whose style is predicated on looking like a pinup-girl Madame Alexander doll (which actually exist, somehow), or Justin Bieber, whose skin looks more and more unworldly with every passing photograph; the tagline wasn’t the only unsettling thing about that Rolling Stone cover).

Now, these endorsements don’t always reflect reality. Stars are naturally perfect–they don’t get pimples! Or, more likely, stars certainly don’t use over-the-counter products when they’ve got armies of stylists with bayonets of cortisone shots at the ready, plus Photoshop to clear the field more if necessary. So it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that Bieber probably doesn’t slather all three (is it still three?) rounds of Proactiv on his face after a night of swaggy adulthood.

Yet it’s taken this long for, as The Guardian reports, the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority to ban the zit ads ads. The grounds are a bit more technical than you’d expect–the thrust of the lawsuit’s that Bieber and Perry were using the U.S. formulation of the product, not the British one–and the U.K. tends to be stricter with ad standards than the States. And there’s probably going to be a way around this. Nevertheless, we’re sure this has crushed at least one person’s dream of ironically watching Bieber endorsements, or magically getting Katy Perry’s skin tone, or running an ad campaign in the U.K. (Those dreams count too, you know.)

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