Dove, a body wash company known for its advertisement campaigns featuring women in their real skin, has ironically released a new ad which has started up a new controversy.

 

Since 2004, Dove has been promoting its, “Real Women, Real Beauty,” campaign, which has successfully represented women of all shapes, sizes, and color. However, the 13-second Facebook ad uploaded to social media fired up many critics from advertising blog, Copyranter, describing the ad as, “turning Black women into Latino women into White women.”

 

The ad, which shows three women standing in front of a wall, are split into “before” and “after” panels. The three women, however, are shown getting gradually lighter in skin tone, as the media has also noticed, becoming thinner as well.

 

Lola Ogunyemi, the Black woman who modeled in the ad, came forward to explain Dove’s “non-racist” intentions and her overall experience working with the company. The Guardian interviewed Ogunyemi after the ad stirred negative responses. Ogunyemi told The Guardian that at a young age, she was told she was, “pretty for a dark-skinned girl.” Ogunyemi is a Nigerian woman who grew up in London and was raised in Atlanta.

Fully aware of beauty industries historically, and still today, using darker models to demonstrate a product’s skin-lightening qualities, Ogunyemi willingly accepted Dove’s offer to be the face of the new campaign ad.

​

“If you google ‘racist ad,’ right now, a picture of my face is the first result,” said Ogunyemi. “I had been excited to be a part of the commercial and promote the strength and beauty of my race, so for it to be met with widespread outrage was upsetting.”

​

Ogunyemi continued to explain that, while shooting the ad and working with Dove, she felt no inclination that she was portrayed as inferior, or as the “before” in a before and after shot. Instead, she described her experience as positive.

​

“I had an amazing time on set. 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,” said Ogunyemi.

​

The women in the ad were not aware of how the final edits would look, but when the 13-second clip on Facebook was released, several people congratulated Ogunyemi for being the first woman to appear on-screen, representing Black girl magic.

​

The full 30-second commercial was released in the U.S. on television, which showed seven women instead of three, all of different races and ages, being asked the same question: “If your skin were a wash label, what would it say?”

​

“While I agree with Dove’s response to unequivocally apologise for any offense caused, they could have also defended their creative vision, and their choice to include me, an unequivocally dark-skinned black woman, as a face of their campaign. I am not just some silent victim of a mistaken beauty campaign. I am strong, I am beautiful, and I will not be erased,” Ogunyemi concluded.

​

Dove’s response to the criticism expanded upon Twitter, Facebook, and their PR firm. Their response through their PR firm stated, “The ad is intended to illustrate the benefits of using Dove VisibleCare Body Wash, by making skin visibly more beautiful in just one week. All three women are intended to demonstrate the "after" product benefit. We do not condone any activity or imagery that intentionally insults any audience."

​

While several critics have called Dove out for missing its mark on representing women’s natural beauty and skin color, the ad was misinterpreted and misguided in several ways and overall, created a huge racial misunderstanding.