Dove Slammed On Social Media For Ad Of Black Woman Taking Off Her Skin To Become A White Woman

Soap company Dove is currently embroiled in a PR disaster. Seriously, they’ll be lucky if they have any black customers left after this.

I don’t know if this latest campaign was done by an disgruntled intern or they just simply missed the mark.

But Dove are understandably facing backlash after they posted an advert of a black woman taking off her shirt and skin to become a white woman. 

In the now deleted picture, the four-panel shot shows a black woman in a chocolate brown shirt. She then takes it off to reveal herself to be a white woman in a off-white shirt. 

After the photo went viral, the company took to their social media to apologize. 

‘Dove is committed to representing the beauty of diversity,’ the company said on Facebook. 

‘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.’

‘The feedback that has been shared is important to us and we’ll use it to guide us in the future.’

They also took to Twitter to try to ease the where the anger was particularly thick. 

‘An image we recently posted on Facebook missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully.’

‘We deeply regret the offense it caused,’ added the company.

One user said: ‘Lol did this even look right to y’all? I mean your whole team sat down and cleared this b******t right here? How?’ 

And many had issues with the lackluster apology Dove offered to its customers and followers.

Sonia Gupta said: ‘This is the most non-apology apology I’ve seen all week. Are you joining the Trump administration now? WTF is that ad even supposed to mean?’

A few users brought up instances when the brand had other questionable marketing ploys that seemed to paint blackness as undesired. 

Showing a campaign where two panels show ‘before’ and ‘after’ as three models from darkest to lightest stand in front of them, Nonhlanhla Mabhena simply said: ‘You have done it in the past.’

Another user showed labeling on one of their products bottles that said ‘nourishing lotion for normal to dark skin.’  

A photo also circulated on Facebook showing  examples of brands with racist marketing strategies from the 1960’s. 

They showed the comparison to Dove advertisement campaigns in 2017.