{"id":159269,"date":"2017-10-12T05:27:59","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T05:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=159269"},"modified":"2017-10-14T05:04:12","modified_gmt":"2017-10-14T05:04:12","slug":"i-am-the-woman-in-the-racist-dove-ad-i-am-not-a-victim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=159269","title":{"rendered":"I am the woman in the &#8216;racist Dove ad&#8217;. I am not a victim"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Lola Ogunyemi &#8212; Guardian.co.uk Oct 11, 2017<\/h1>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Here is the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Dove?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Dove<\/a> commercial guys. This is better than those screenshots. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/1pDgKH6eCc\">pic.twitter.com\/1pDgKH6eCc<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Keisha M. (@KeishaMcCotry) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KeishaMcCotry\/status\/917385519511642112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 9, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">From a very young age, I\u2019ve been told, \u201cYou\u2019re so pretty \u2026 for a dark-skinned girl.\u201d I am a Nigerian woman, born in London and raised in Atlanta. I\u2019ve grown up very aware of society\u2019s opinion that dark-skinned people, especially women, would look better if our skin were lighter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">I know that the beauty industry has fueled this opinion with its long history of presenting lighter, mixed-race or white models as the beauty standard. Historically, and in many countries still today, darker models are even used to demonstrate a product\u2019s skin-lightening qualities to help women reach this standard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">This repressive narrative is one I have seen affect women from many different communities I\u2019ve been a part of. And this is why, when Dove offered me the chance to be the face of a <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/theguardian\/videos\/10156039951371323\/\">new body wash campaign<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, I jumped<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Having the opportunity to represent my dark-skinned sisters in a global beauty brand felt like the perfect way for me to remind the world that we are here, we are beautiful, and more importantly, we are valued.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Then one morning, I woke up to a message from a friend asking if the woman in a post he\u2019d seen was really me. I went online and discovered I had become <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2017\/oct\/08\/dove-apologises-for-ad-showing-black-woman-turning-into-white-one\">the unwitting poster child for racist advertising<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. No lie.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">If you Google \u201cracist ad\u201d right now, a picture of my face is the first result. I had been excited to be a part of the commercial and promote the strength and beauty of my race, so for it to be met with widespread outrage was upsetting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Calls were being made to boycott Dove products, and friends from all over the world were checking on me to see if I was OK. I was overwhelmed by just how controversial the ad had become.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">If I had even the slightest inclination that I would be portrayed as inferior, or as the \u201cbefore\u201d in a before and after shot, I would have been the first to say an emphatic \u201cno\u201d. I would have (un)happily walked right off set and out of the door. That is something that goes against everything I stand for.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">However, the experience I had with the Dove team was positive. I had an amazing time on set. All of the women in the shoot understood the concept and overarching objective \u2013 to use our differences to highlight the fact that all skin deserves gentleness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">I remember all of us being excited at the idea of wearing nude T-shirts and turning into one another. We weren\u2019t sure how the final edit was going to look, nor which of us would actually be featured in it, but everyone seemed to be in great spirits during filming, including me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Then the first Facebook ad was released: a 13-second video clip featuring me, a white woman, and an Asian woman removing our nude tops and changing into each other. I loved it. My friends and family loved it. People congratulated me for being the first to appear, for looking fabulous, and for representing Black Girl Magic. I was proud.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Then, the full, 30-second TV commercial was released in the US, and I was over the moon again. There were seven of us in the full version, different races and ages, each of us answering the same question: \u201cIf your skin were a wash label, what would it say?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Again, I was the first model to appear in the ad, describing my skin as \u201c20% dry, 80% glowing\u201d, and appearing again at the end. I loved it, and everyone around me seemed to as well. I think the full TV edit does a much better job of making the campaign\u2019s message loud and clear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2017\/oct\/10\/i-am-woman-racist-dove-ad-not-a-victim\">Continues &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you repeat an accusation often enough &#8212; such as claims of &#8220;racism&#8221; &#8212; then at some point it&#8217;s going to be believed. Even if the allegation is totally unfounded <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Race"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159269"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159308,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159269\/revisions\/159308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}