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Dove Advertisement (Hint of Racism)

Dove released a 3-second GIF ad that featured three women removing their shirts to reveal the next woman underneath. The transition from a black woman to a white woman evoked racist tropes of black people being "cleansed" into whiteness. The ad caused widespread offense. Dove apologized, acknowledging they missed representing women of color thoughtfully. A Dove spokesperson said the ad was meant to celebrate diversity but they were wrong and offended many people. Dove removed the ad and said they would re-evaluate internal processes for creating and reviewing content. This was not the first time Dove faced backlash for ads perceived as racist, as two previous ads in 2011 and 2017 drew similar criticism.

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212 views2 pages

Dove Advertisement (Hint of Racism)

Dove released a 3-second GIF ad that featured three women removing their shirts to reveal the next woman underneath. The transition from a black woman to a white woman evoked racist tropes of black people being "cleansed" into whiteness. The ad caused widespread offense. Dove apologized, acknowledging they missed representing women of color thoughtfully. A Dove spokesperson said the ad was meant to celebrate diversity but they were wrong and offended many people. Dove removed the ad and said they would re-evaluate internal processes for creating and reviewing content. This was not the first time Dove faced backlash for ads perceived as racist, as two previous ads in 2011 and 2017 drew similar criticism.

Uploaded by

Mariane JABEL
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Dove Drops an Ad Accused of Racism

The ad, a three-second GIF, featured three women, each removing her shirt to reveal the
next.

But the transition from the black woman to the white women — compiled into a static
collage by a social media user — evoked a long-running racist trope in soap advertising:
a “dirty” black person cleansed into whiteness. 

On Saturday (Sept 7, 2017),


Dove — owned by Unilever —
apologized, writing on
Facebook: “Dove is committed
to representing the beauty of
diversity. In an image we
posted this week, we missed
the mark in thoughtfully
representing women of color
and we deeply regret the
offense that it has caused.”

Marissa Solan, a spokeswoman for Dove, said on Sunday that the GIF “was intended to
convey that Dove Body Wash is for every woman and be a celebration of diversity, but
we got it wrong and, as a result, offended many people.”

Marissa Solan, a spokeswoman for Dove, said on Sunday that the GIF “was intended to
convey that Dove Body Wash is for every woman and be a celebration of diversity, but
we got it wrong and, as a result, offended many people.”

She added that Dove had removed the post and was “re-evaluating our internal
processes for creating and reviewing content.” She declined to say how many people
reviewed the ad or whether any of them were African-American.

Dove’s ad was not an isolated case by one company, but the latest in a long line of tone-
deaf ads by many companies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/business/dove-ad-racist.html
Dove – “Before & After”
Dove completely missed the fact that they’re
implying here that dark skin is dirty. This is an
advertisement that shows discrimination, even if
that wasn’t the message that Dove was trying to
send.

Unfortunately, the cosmetics brand made the same


mistake again in 2017 with a commercial that
showed an African-American woman turning into a
white one.

In 2011, Dove was criticized for another ad: this one


showing three women standing side by side, each
with lighter skin than the woman next to her. Behind
them were signs reading “before” and “after”; the
“before” sign, positioned behind an African-
American woman, showed cracked skin, while the
“after” sign, behind a white woman, showed smooth skin.

“Visibly more beautiful skin,” the ad read.

Edelman, the public relations company representing Dove, said in a statement to
Gawker: “All three women are intended to demonstrate the ‘after’ product benefit. We do
not condone any activity or imagery that intentionally insults any audience.”
The fact that the most recent ad was Dove’s second to cause offense was not lost on
social media users.

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