Why was the dove advertisement blown out of proportion.
Blogged by: Ayden
I'm sure by now you have probably heard about the so called racist dove ad, if you haven't here is it easily explained.
Earlier this week dove released a new ad as a start to a new body wash campaign. The ad begins with an african american women wearing a shirt that closely matches her skin tone, she then proceeds to remove her shirt turning her into a white woman, also wearing a shirt matching her skin tone.
This was the moment in the ad where people decided it was an act of racism , most people assumed that the ad was trying to convey that the more you use the product the cleaner you will be, and everyone thought they were using a black women to signify dirt and a white women to signify clean , but if you continued to watch the ad you would see that the white women, then turned into a Latina women then Asian then Indian.
All women of different skins ages and ethnicities were represented in this ad, but people still decided to assume racism.
Dove at this time has now removed the ad and issued an apology, but personally I don't think Dove should have to apologize for this, the intent of the ad was to show that dove works on all skin types and skin colors it was not racist despite public opinion.
Recently the African American women appeared in the ad named Lola Ogunyemi has spoken out about the ad saying that “I was not a victim of racism and should not be treated as such”.
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| See photo credit below. |
Lola is of Nigerian descent but was born in London and raised in Atlanta and has always noticed the white standard of beauty that plagues dark skinned girls, so when Dove offered her a chance to be in a new body wash campaign, she was over the moon at the chance of being able to represent her dark skinned sisters in an ad. She believed that it was the perfect time to say we are here, we are beautiful and more importantly we are valued.
The day after the ad had been released Lola woke up to a text message from a friend of hers, asking if the person in the ad was really her. Overnight, the ad had gone viral and not in a positive way. This is as people were furious at the ad and Lola was quite upset, as she had been so enthusiastic about the commercial, she has talked about her positive experience with the Dove team and the other women in the commercial saying how proud and happy they had all been to be apart of this.
Honestly I think this is ridiculous, we as a society have become overly sensitive.
These days people are always giving there opinion on how companies should promote diversity and when that happens people always making an issue out of it.
I know I might get ridiculed for this because, in my experience of being a white women I don't know a lot about oppression, but that doesn't mean I don't understand it enough to do something about it and to give an opinion.
If you want to watch part of the ad watch the video linked here.
References
D'Onofrio, K. (2017, October 13). Model in Dove Ad Speaks Out: 'I'm Not a Victim'. Retrieved from https://www.diversityinc.com/news/model-dove-ad-speaks-im-not-victim/
J. (2017, October 09). Dove Commercial Advertisement (Full Ad). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJssvw1LQbI
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