Hi, Unilever.
It's me, Erica Myers.
I was raised on a plethora of your products: Dove, Lux, Vaseline and Close-up. Those are just a few. There are others. When you launched the Real Beauty campaign for Dove, I was ecstatic! Here was a company that was letting women, no, PEOPLE, of the world know that beauty is skin deep and everyone's to have. You showed white women, brown women, yellow women, red women and the darkest of skin tones of woman. The same 2000 body parts that Lever 2000 covered applied to 2000 tones and types of skin. Everyone was equal in your health, hygiene and beauty products' eyes.
I have been bamboozled! I browse the web often, looking for various things that draw my attention. This time it was controversial magazine covers. What I found wasn't a controversial magazine cover. It was your advertisement for a skin cream sold in India and Thailand. Really, Unilever, Flawless White?
Not only does the name incite an innerprotest in my soul, but the commercial is racially heartbreaking. The one I saw targeted for East Indian women had flames in my eyes! Basically, you're saying that this gorgeous Indian woman that I saw being dumped would be happier and thoroughly loved if she lightened her skin to the point of being white? Why can't they be "real beauties" like the women in America? This is what Indian women dream of and fantasize about? I hardly would think so, but I haven't asked any Indian women. Nor have I asked women of Asian descent.
I couldn't believe these commercials. These women were not happy with their skintone. Unilever's only suggestion was to lighten it to a Flawless White. Flawless White, yes, I grit my teeth whether I say it out loud or even think it. My jaw tightens even as I type this out. This is the same slavery that Black women have had to suffer for centuries, under the thumbnail of "Flawless" White "beauty".
Black women spent hours straightening their hair, lightening their skin tone, picking and prodding at every "flaw" of their Black skin. They paraded, judged and mourned at the comparison of a simple brown paper bag, which even in the eyes of Whites was still just trash. They slathered, covered, exercised, bred and chemistried their hair, their skin, their features and their souls, just to measure up to the "beauty" of a white woman. Losing what makes them uniquely Black, visually, most women did whatever they could, enslaving themselves.
From television shows/movies that portrayed Black women as big bootied maids for cleaning a white family's home/some man's conquest and magazines geared towards the women of the day (as long as they were White), Black women have been constantly judge by the European White standards, still in use today by clothing designers, modeling agencies and basically everywhere a Black woman goes. The Black woman is judged still today, whether it is at an interview for a career (even while holding a degree or two), whether she walks into a store and is carrying a large purse, or while standing in line buying a movie ticket. Her "peers" are checking her. She could be wearing the highest in fashions, driving the best vehicle or just dressed in sweats to workout, she will be judged unfairly. It could be the White woman behind her, complaining about her butt. It could be the Asian man behind the counter, wondering if she is going to pay with food stamps. It could be the Black women walking by, nitpicking over her clothes in a hrumph of "No, she didn't wear that."
See, Unilever, people of color already have enough things dividing them from equality that they have to worry about. The last thing we need is your beauty products telling us we can't be beautiful the way we are and that the goal is to be White. Have you even seen me? I'm here. Look at me. Take in my darker skin tone. Absorb my freckles. Twist my nappy sandy hair around your fingers. No, really, I invite you to rub my robust stomach. Touch all 2000 of my parts. Now, feel my heart, my energy, my soul. Engulf the essence of me. I am thoroughly cleaned. I am 100% moisturized. I am swaddled in cotton fabric. I am me. I am alive. I am beautiful.
Click Here to view the Indian version of the Flawless White commercial