Black actor in ‘racist’ Dove ad speaks out

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This article was published 13/10/2017 (3200 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Dove asked Lola Ogunyemi to be in a new soap campaign, she viewed it as an opportunity to represent her “dark-skinned sisters” and “remind the world that we are here, we are beautiful, and more importantly, we are valued,” she wrote in a commentary for the Guardian.

She says she was shocked to wake up to find she had become the “unwitting poster child for racist advertising.”

“If you Google ‘racist ad’ right now, a picture of my face is the first result,” Ogunyemi says in the commentary.

The recently released Dove body wash ad drew widespread outrage for showing a black woman — Ogunyemi — removing her shirt to reveal a white woman. To scores of consumers, the images invoked a message that dark skin is dirty and in need of cleansing, a racist stereotype historically seen in soap ads.

Dove removed the ad and issued an apology, saying it “missed the mark in representing women of colour thoughtfully.” In an emailed statement to the Associated Press, Dove says the video “did not represent the diversity of real beauty, which is something Dove is passionate about and is core to our beliefs, and it should not have happened.”

But Ogunyemi has a message for critics: “I am not a victim.”

While members of the public were justified in their initial anger, she says, the photos posted online were misinterpreted and left out important context. Most of the images showed only Ogunyemi and the white woman that followed her. But the full video clip actually showed the white woman changing her top to reveal a third woman, who is Asian, Ogunyemi says.

“I am a Nigerian woman, born in London and raised in Atlanta,” she writes. “I’ve grown up very aware of society’s opinion that dark-skinned people, especially women, would look better if our skin were lighter.”

The complete, 30-second commercial, Ogunyemi says, showed seven models of various ethnic backgrounds answering the question: “If your skin were a wash label, what would it say?”

Even after filming the ad and seeing the final edited version, Ogunyemi loved the concept and was “over the moon” when she saw the final product.

In her commentary, she writes that she supported Dove’s decision to “unequivocally” apologize for the ad. But, she adds, “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.”

— Washington Post