Stephanie Soechtig, director of the disinformation documentary Tapped, writing at Huffington Post:
At the risk of career suicide I’m calling bullshit on the hypocrisy of Hollywood and its celebrity endorsements. From Reese Witherspoon endorsing Avon — a company that loads its products with phthalates and parabens (chemicals linked to breast cancer) — to Jennifer Aniston, a woman who says she cares about conserving water resources and then endorses bottled water.
You can’t turn around these days without seeing a Hollywood A-lister endorsing a product. Here’s my problem with the whole situation: often they are endorsing products that aren’t good for us and aren’t good for the environment.
Seriously people, WTF? Am I the only one who saw Spider-Man? You know, “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility?”
Take Reese Witherspoon and her colleagues Jessica Alba, Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymoore, Jessica Biel, et al — all these women endorse various brands of cosmetics that contain parabens, phthalates, and other endocrine-disrupting, cancer-causing ingredients.
Call me naïve but I believe we as a society have a certain obligation to look out for one another. I feel even more strongly when it comes to women looking out for women. The cosmetics industry uses more than 10,000 chemicals in its products — studies show that one out of every five beauty products contain ingredients certified by government authorities as containing known or probable human carcinogens. For these celebrities to endorse (and glamorize) a product that may be harmful to our health and the health of our children is one of the most irresponsible things a woman could do.
The most recent celebrity endorsement causing a stir is Ellen DeGeneres’s endorsement of Vitamin Water. The enviro-blogs are burning up with ire for Ellen — not because she’s endorsing a sugary beverage — but because of the plastic waste.
People who have watched my bottled water documentary Tapped often ask me why I single out bottled water when soda is also packaged in plastic. To be clear, I’m opposed to any single-use plastic, but I single out bottled water because it’s marketed as a “safe” and “healthy” beverage…
[continues at Huffington Post]
