On Saturday, hair and skin care brand, Dove, came under fire for posting a 13-second Facebook video of a black woman stripping off her shirt to become a white woman. The clip, which has since been deleted from Dove’s Facebook page, was immediately slammed by internet users for suggesting that “darker skin” equaled “dirty” and that the black woman’s appearance was in need of a transformation.
Now, Lola Ogunyemi, the black model at the center of the controversial ad, is speaking out on how she’s not a victim and why she’s standing by the brand’s campaign. In essay for The Guardian, Ogunyemi, who is of Nigerian descent, explained that she was initially excited to participate in the campaign to “represent [her] dark-skinned sisters” and “promote the strength and beauty” of her race. Ogunyemi went on to reveal that the shots of the women stripping off their shirts to become other women were filmed out of sequence, so she had no clue where in the lineup she stood. Still, she felt confident in the campaign’s message, which she said was to use the women’s differences “to highlight the fact that all skin deserves gentleness.”
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“If I had even the slightest inclination that I would be portrayed as inferior, or as the ‘before’...