Infomercial Irony: Joan Rivers Promotes the Beauty Products Right to Bare Legs and Great Hair Day

In one of the most ironic endorsement deals in advertising history comedienne Joan Rivers, poster-child for plastic surgery excess, has gone from selling her crappy jewelry on QVC to promoting her own line of “Joan Rivers Beauty” products via infomercials. Only an appearance by Michael Vick on the DogPedic ad would convey more cognitive dissonance.

At least the face-lift freak had to good sense to avoid selling any facial care items! Instead, she does infomercials for a “leg concealer” called Right to Bare Legs and a “fill-in powder” for the scalp called Great Hair Day.

Right to Bare Legs

Are you one of those women whose web of varicose veins is so elaborate that you had a spider tattoo placed in the middle so people would think you intended your legs to look like that? Now you can cover up both the veins and the tattoo with Joan Rivers’ Right to Bare Legs concealer (www.GetBareLegs.com).

I have never noticed Joan Rivers’ legs before, but I can completely believe that without some sort of cover up they would be nothing but a tangled patchwork of blue veins.

Right to Bare Legs has the distinction of being the first infomercial product ever named after a part of the US Constitution (namely, the “right to bear arms” of the second amendment). Joan jokes, “…this is Amercia: You have the right to bare legs. That’s what the pilgrims fought for.”—which confuses the colonial era with the constitutional period.

Maybe another infomercial marketer will get ambitious enough to name a product after the bill of attainder or ex post facto law.

Joan ends this infomercial by leading the women in a conga line around the set to show off their non-veiny legs.

Great Hair Day

The other product in the “Joan Rivers Beauty” line is Great Hair Day (www.GreatHairDaySale.com). The big idea behind this item is that balding women should just hide the bare skin patches on their scalps by covering them up with the Great Hair Day “fill in powder.” Maybe the Hair Club will be so inspired by this infomercial that they will start telling bald men to just wear baseball caps.

The announcer in this infomercial actually tries to entice viewers by promising (and I am quoting!), “You’ll have gorgeous movie star hair, just like Joan Rivers.”

Considering that Joan Rivers’ hair looks like a sun-damaged Fraggle, that seems more like a threat than a promise!