Under the terms of the tender offer, which is scheduled to start in 10 days, Shiseido plans to buy shares for $18.20 each, a 40.8 percent premium over Bare Escentuals’ average stock price during the last three months, and a 39.9 percent premium over the closing price Wednesday. Once the majority of stock is tendered, Shiseido said it would buy the remaining shares for the same price, $18.20, in a second-step merger. The offer was made through Shiseido's U.S. affiliate.

Shiseido said the Bare Escentuals board will back the offer. Among the shareholders, Berkshire Partners LLC and certain affiliates, which hold about 16 percent of outstanding common stock, have agreed to the deal. In addition, Bare Escentuals chief executive officer Leslie Blodgett, who holds 6 percent of the firm, would exchange 40 percent of her stake in exchange for an undisclosed interest in Shiseido.

The acquisition would be operated as a separate division of Shiseido and its business would be managed by the current roster of executives, led by Blodgett, who is expected to report to Tokyo headquarters.

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"I couldn't be more pleased to be joining forces with the team at Shiseido....Together with Shiseido, we look forward to bringing our mineral-based beauty products to even more women worldwide," Blodgett said.

The broadcaster's top manager, Ezzatollah Zarghami, told his managers that female presenters wearing makeup are to be taken off air, saying the wearing of makeup was against the law -- even though millions of women in this country use it. He said there "should be no insulting of family elders by children." "Lowering and refining of music is among our plans," Zarghami also told his managers. His comments were reported in the Ettemaad newspaper. Iran's state television is under heavy criticism from both supporters and opponents of the government, who say its programs are relatively dull and don't appeal to the nation's urban middle class. Viewers are increasingly turning to foreign-based Farsi-language satellite channels, some of them financially backed by the United States and Britain.

Some think such a law would destroy photographic art; some think it might help reduce anorexia; some say the idea is aimed at the wrong target, given that nearly every advertising photograph is retouched. Others believe such a label might sensitize people to the fakery involved in most of the advertising images with which they're bludgeoned.

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For Ms. Boyer, who has a background in health administration, the fight is really about her two teenage daughters, 16 and 17, and the pressures on young women to match the fashionable ideal of a thin body and perfect skin. "I got interested in the subject of the body because it's really a mother's reflection," she said. "It's the closeness I have to adolescents that drove me to become interested in these subjects."

It is a topic that consumes her. "If someone wants to make life a success, wants to feel good in their skin, wants to be part of society, one has to be thin or skinny, and then it's not enough -- one will have his body transformed with software that alters the image, so we enter a standardized and brainwashed world, and those who aren't part of it are excluded from society."

Her proposed law has yet to be voted on in the National Assembly, where Ms. Boyer sits as a member of the center-right from heavily Socialist Marseille. The legislation is aimed at advertising, though its preamble suggests expanding the measure to other kinds of photographs. Her initiative has already brought her attention, as part of a larger, passionate and confused debate about models, beauty and anorexia.

Part of the movement of top-tier stars into beauty began when the celebrity fragrance trend started to gain traction in 2001 with Jennifer Lopez's Glow by J.Lo, which did upwards of $100 million at retail globally in its first year on counter. In February 2002, Catherine Zeta-Jones signed a spokeswoman deal with Elizabeth Arden, and the star race was on. It now includes Cate Blanchett promoting Procter & Gamble Co.'s SK-II skin care line; Halle Berry representing both makeup at Revlon and her own fragrances at Coty Beauty; Kate Winslet as the face of Lancome's Tresor fragrance, and Brad Pitt partnering with Kiehl's. As Zeta-Jones told WWD in March 2008, "Things have completely changed. It used to be, if you're an actor, why are you selling stuff? People only used to do it in Japan. But beauty is an industry that makes complete sense for an actress."