There’s no apology for Dove now
Beauty brand Dove deleted a “three-second video clip” from its Facebook page and admitted on Saturday that it had “missed the mark in thoughtfully representing women of colour” in an ad for body wash.
Consumers had reacted angrily to images of a black woman removing a brown shirt and appearing to transform into a white woman removing a similar shirt.
For those of you who have not seen the recent Dove Soap ad that has set the internet on rage, take a look at the pictures below.
Why is it so difficult for society to accept the women of black colour, while we see random facebook posts saying, “black is my colour”. Why people say it’s all black & white when it’s only white in their heads. The world is constantly telling women of colour and black women specifically that they are less than…not enough…even limited. Apparently, Dove has no problem being zero exception to this rule as this is not the first time that they’ve done this type of ad, nor is it the first apology that they’ve issued.
They are no different than the other companies who tried it and then rolled out an awful apology upon getting called out for it.
Earlier, dove was slammed for doing something similar-
Dove said, “An image we recently posted on Facebook missed the mark in representing women of colour thoughtfully. We deeply regret the offence it caused.”
They saw nothing wrong with that ad. They were down with putting African-Americans back into that precarious position of having to decide if they are angry, hurt, sad, or all of the above. That feeling of being gut-punched yet again by a company who claimed to have learned their lesson lingers.
Why would they do this again? What is so hard to grasp here? Images like these hurt us as a culture, as a people and as a nation.
Why should Dove or any other company who does this get a second chance? Or in this case, a third. It tells our precious little ones that there is something valid within these ads. Right or wrong, that is what they are picking up and we can’t afford for this to go unpunished yet again.
There is a price to pay for this behaviour and either we make Dove pay it or take the hit ourselves in the psychological damage that will continue to be done for generations to come if we just kiss and make up once again.
The cost of allowing them to clean their reputation from this is too high. And at the end of the day..it’s just soap.