We have no idea what Dove beauty was thinking about when they dropped their 3 seconds long GIF on their Facebook page days ago, but we are sure that they weren’t expecting to cause a massive uproar on social media.
The Unilever beauty brand dropped a gif that featured three women removing their shirts to reveal another woman in a different skin tone. The second woman in the video being a black woman, who transforms into a white woman.
Marissa Solan from dove said, 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.”
Although the company apologised via Facebook saying;
“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.”
This isn’t the first time the Unilever product is facing backlash from the media as regards their “insensitive” ad. In 2011, the brand released a controversial ad which featured 3 women side by side showing the before and after result of using Dove soap. The former being a black woman with cracked skin and the latter being a white woman with clear skin.
On social media, the Dove ads have been compared with racist ads from the 19th century, where soap brands were heavy on racist advertisement contests, majority of which showed black kids getting a wash and transiting from black to white.
