Now I’ve seen everything [twice]

A couple of weeks ago a prescription drug to grow longer eyelashes started showing up in commercials on tv. You read that right. A prescription drug to grow longer eyelashes.

Oh, and the possible side effects that are announced while showing film of long lustrous eyelashes are:

Increased hair growth in other areas of the face, redness, itching, swelling, bacterial keratitis from the product itself or a contaminated applicator, darkening of the eyelid skin [possibly reversible] increase in the brown pigmentation of the eye [probably permanent] and changes in the internal pressure of the eye.

That's all. Just those little niggly minor side effects.

But won't it be worth it to have longer eyelashes? I mean it's not like there's ANY OTHER WAY to get longer lashes…….apparently all the mascara and false eyelashes in the world have disappeared into the ether and this is the only way to have eyelashes that will make you the envy of anyone who gazes upon your glamorous puss.

But the killer thing? This isn't the strangest beauty campaign that I heard about this month.

The next thing that I'm going to invite you to consider with me is not the product itself, but the commercial and advertising campaign for the product.

The product is a cleanser designed for daily use to remove dirt and makeup from the face.

If you notice that the music introducing the commercial is from I LOVE LUCY there will be no doubt in your mind that a lot of people in the fifties saw this particular campaign.
[here's the video]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q1gksqqhLU

In the commercial the cleansing properties of the product are demonstrated by putting radioactive dirt on a model's face and verifying the dirt with a Geiger counter.

[I'll wait while you read that part again]

Then the announcer calmly states that they tested the leading facial cleanser, complexion soap and Dorothy Gray Cold cream to cleanse the model's face of radioactive dirt and the cold cream worked two and a half times better than the other leading products.

The commercial doesn't say that the radiation no longer registered on the Geiger counter. They just left any details of residual radiation out completely.

So of course after seeing these two things together my mind wove a little time travel fantasy.

What if the model who had already been exposed to radiation showed up in our time plane?

What if she wanted to grow longer eyelashes?

What if the eyelash prescription went ballistic when exposed to radiation?

We could have a model running around out there with really itchy dark brown eyes that bulge from her overly hairy face who can suddenly shoot laser beams out of her eyes at will.

But the sad reality of that scenario would probably be that as soon as she shot the lasers her twelve foot long eyelashes would catch fire.

*sigh*

The things we do for beauty.