Woman in Dove ad says company should have defended its vision

[IronLionZion]

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/10/media/dove-ad-woman-responds/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom

A woman featured in a controversial Dove ad says the spot is being misinterpreted.

Lola Ogunyemi, a black woman, wrote Tuesday in the Guardian that she agreed with the company's decision to apologize for its ad, which was seen by many as racially insensitive.

But she also said Dove should have defended its creative vision.
"I feel the public was justified in their initial outrage," she said. "Having said that, I can also see that a lot has been left out."

Dove came under fire after it posted a 3-second GIF to its Facebook page Friday. It showed a looping image of Ogunyemi removing a dark brown t-shirt to reveal a white woman. She then removes her beige t-shirt to reveal a third woman.

"All of the women in the shoot understood the concept and overarching objective -- to use our differences to highlight the fact that all skin deserves gentleness," she said.

I am the woman in the 'racist Dove ad'. I am not a victim
-Lola Ogunyemi
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/10/i-am-woman-racist-dove-ad-not-a-victim

From a very young age, I’ve been told, “You’re so pretty … for a dark-skinned girl.” I am a Nigerian woman, born in London and raised in Atlanta. I’ve grown up very aware of society’s opinion that dark-skinned people, especially women, would look better if our skin were lighter.

I know that the beauty industry has fueled this opinion with its long history of presenting lighter, mixed-race or white models as the beauty standard. Historically, and in many countries still today, darker models are even used to demonstrate a product’s skin-lightening qualities to help women reach this standard.

This repressive narrative is one I have seen affect women from many different communities I’ve been a part of. And this is why, when Dove offered me the chance to be the face of a new body wash campaign, I jumped.

Having the opportunity to represent my dark-skinned sisters in a global beauty brand felt like the perfect way for me to remind the world that we are here, we are beautiful, and more importantly, we are valued.

I love liberals. Liberals are my favorite people and it's great that people get outraged at racism. But this Dove ad isn't it. My people's culture does value skin lightening products and view dark skin as a sign of poverty and ugliness that must be washed away if you ever hope to get married, which is racist and wrong. I'm brown. I like Dove for men products. It's OK to look for the rest of a story and it's context before developing an opinion on something. It's good to verify before raising our blood pressure to unhealthy levels.

[Hoyt]

1. I think we are too sensitive at times, although racism is one area where we should be.

I appreciate the actress setting us straight.

I think it's a nice ad with that background, and the first young lady has a great smile.

[WinkyDink]

8. This ad was ill-conceived. If a VISUAL needs an essay to "explain" it, Houston, you have a

problem.*

*It's an allusion.

[Blue_Adept]

21. Have you met most people these days?

It feels like you have to explain 1+1=2 to many of them. The lack of critical thinking and context is out the window in favor of outrage du jour.

[Demsrule86]

10. I disagree...the explanation makes no sense.

It still looks racist to me. It appears to be the same woman ...once Black after Dove white. She is dressed the same, hair is the same...I call bullshit on the explanation.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. The white woman reveals a 3rd woman (South Asian?) in the full clip

The gif in the OP plays twice - once just showing "black to white", then "black to white to brown". I think they're saying that Dove never truncated the clip to just "black to white".

I think it was a poorly thought out ad, because the meaning still isn't clear - some sort of "we're all the same, really" message, I suppose, but it's hard to tie that to skin cleanser, and the danger of people just seeing "black to white" was surely always there.

[Demsrule86]

18. Bad ad...when you think you should use skin color...just don't. First of all the idea that a

lotion is good for all skin colors is stupid. You use lotions depending on dryness and other factors.

[Philistein]

2. What should that have done?

Not had any white women in the ad? No black women? Seems they would be criticized for whatever they did.

[brush]

3. It's a poor concept that never should've made it out of the first idea meeting.

[roscoeroscoe]

5. I agree

If the idea made any kind of sense, try running the order of models from white to black for a change

[WinkyDink]

7. You write as though somehow this ad was required. It's called "scrapping a project."

[JI7]

4. i don't think she is a victim either but it's still a really bad ad

[WinkyDink]

6. Gee, funny how Dove didn't portray a White woman revealing a Black woman underneath. This essay is

beyond ludicrous.

[oberliner]

9. The white woman in the ad does reveal a woman of color underneath

The white woman lifts her shirt/skin to reveal an Asian woman. The idea being that the product appeals to a diverse group of women (white, African-American, Asian-American).

[aikoaiko]

11. Dove probably should more sensitive to the racist idea of washing away brown skin clean

Which is easily triggered in the first part of the ad.

I'm not sure the rest of the ad where the white woman changes to lighter brown skin woman undoes that initial imagery.

There has to be a better way of showing diversity than changing skin color.

[melman]

12. It only shows that if that's what you want to see

It's not actually there. It's just three women removing a shirt, which then reveals the next woman. No skin is changing color.

[tavernier]

13. Totally agree.

A different group with sex hang ups might wring their hands over three women removing their shirts, even though no skin is seen, insisting that it is implied.

Folks, lighten up. Or darken up, if you prefer.

[aikoaiko]

14. Taking a single event I can see your point, but there is a history and a recent history with Dove.

There is a long history about this concept of black skin being dirt and washed away with soap.
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Dove is aware of this issue because it caught some heat for the mere suggestion through juxtaposition.:
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Again, I'm just saying a soap company probably needs to be sensitive to this issue.

And I'll add that I agree with the model that it would have been nice if Dove had explained the non-racist narrative it was trying to convey.

[IronLionZion]

15. HuffPo and others promoted a deliberately misleading narrative

and people reading it jumped to conclusions without even seeing the entire ad. It was cropped to look bad, and they followed it up with historical ads and foreign country ads that really are racist as a way to reinforce their narrative. I should be offended that liberal media publications deliberately cut out the ethnically ambiguous beige woman as if she never existed.

The only useful thing this controversy exposed is the need for people of color to be on the teams that produce and approve these advertisements to have different perspectives on it. And they could execute it better to avoid such misunderstandings. Sometimes the placement of people has more to do with photography principles than racism.

Then there's this deliberate nonsense from history:

[Bettie]

16. Actually, seeing the whole thing rather than just the first two images

it makes more sense.

It was still tone deaf, but I can see what they were going for.

[Phentex]

20. I agree. I knew there had to be more to this than what was first shown

It just seemed like someone would have noticed the implication early on but it sounds like they had a different concept in mind. As poor as it was.

[Bettie]

24. If they had changed the order of the images

it would have been received in an entirely different way.

[snooper2]

19. Seems some need to be in a constant state of outrage

Outrage just for the sake of outrage...

[treestar]

22. They are getting attention for it

negative attention is better than none - that has been established via Trumpism, and it was true before.

[IronLionZion]

23. They are trying to show their products are for everyone

the TV version has 7 different women to include age and body type but I can't find that version on youtube to share here. They must have pulled it.

The color that most companies value is green. And America is not white or even black and white. There are many shades of brown and tan and other colors who look through the ethnic section of supermarkets and wonder if America is still pretending to be an oreo than a rainbow. This was just a misguided attempt to be inclusive of more Americans in a country where our president actively promised to stop diversity and roll us back a few decades.