Rise in selfies puts gloss on L'Oreal's bottom line

Boss of L’Oreal says young women need to buy makeup to live up to their selfies online.

A cosmetics boss says young women need to buy makeup to live up to their selfies online.

The boss of L'Oreal says Instagram is good for business because young women need to buy more make-up to look like their filtered selfies.

Jean-Paul Agon, the chief executive and chairman of the parent company of Maybelline, Garnier and Lancome, said social media features that can digitally enhance appearances boosted the make-up industry.

His comments were condemned yesterday as "appalling and irresponsible" by one British MP, who suggested it would further heap pressure on vulnerable young people.

Agon told MarketWatch: "The more you make yourself look really great online, the more you have to work on yourself when you go out.

"If [women] want to use filters to look better online, they have to do something in real life also to look better, and that is why they use more cosmetics, more make-up, more skin care, more everything."

Despite announcing disappointing make-up sales in the United States, he said, the beauty business was "pretty immune to crisis".

"That is why ... the price-to-earnings ratio of a company like L'Oreal is pretty high ... because investors and analysts acknowledge the fact that, whatever happens, L'Oreal will be able to keep growing."

British MP Bambos Charalambous, part of a parliamentary group on social media and young people's mental health and well-being, criticised the comments as "appalling and irresponsible". "The idea that people are happy to make money on the back of a fake life is really sad".