The New FTC Guides: Because we're all really stupid

I've recently read about the new FTC guides aimed towards bloggers receiving endorsements (read about it at Jolie Nadine), free products, and even getting paid to write good reviews. Unless you've been living under a rock, or you're very very naive, you are aware that successful beauty bloggers (and any kind of bloggers) receive free products and "incentives" to write positive reviews of the products they are given, among other things. These new guides basically require bloggers to reveal if they are getting paid to post about a product and if the product was given to them for free.

No offense, FTC but it's pretty obvious who is getting products for free and who isn't. I know when Tammy at Lazy Beautiful reviews a product she had to go and shell out her hard-earned cash for it (just like yours truly), as opposed to Karen at Makeup and Beauty Blog who I'm pretty sure is getting tons of perks along with all the hits I'm sure she gets (I ain't mad at you).

While I am in favor of bloggers coming clean about the products and brands they review and recommend, I can't help but feel that these guides are kinda like diet soda; it's a nice gesture, but in the end you know it's not really helping the situation. So what if bloggers, especially beauty bloggers, start disclosing what they got for free and who is sponsoring them, we still have hundreds of magazines and major publications whose beauty editors (who, ironically, don't have to spend a penny on any of the products they recommend!) tell us what products we should be lusting for season after season.

So basically these guides will help little Sally be more discerning when on the web, but when she opens her seventeen magazine she won't be warned that the entire beauty page is just a huge advertisement disguised as "expert advice", or that the products in the make-up bag of her favorite celebrity are all strategically placed and promoted based on that celebrity's current contracts and endorsements.