Lola Ogunyemi is a model who has unwillingly become the face of "racist ad" after she appeared in a Dove body wash campaign. If you Google "Dove racist ad" you'll find three second clips from a longer commercial concept that shows Lola Ogunyemi take her nude T-shirt off, and morph into another woman who is also wearing a nude t-shirt. In the TV-commercial Lola morphs into a pale strawberry blond, who morphs into an olive-skinned brunette, and so on. The idea is obviously to show a diverse group of women, making it clear that all skin, and all skin colour, deserves a gentle body wash. A pretty simple concept, that backfired spectacularly when it was edited down to a 3 second clip to roll on Facebook. Since the short clip only shows Lola morphing into a pale white strawberry blond, the concept isn't clear and what viewers see is a soap basically promising to wash a person into white. That sort of image is from a bygone era.... Lola makes it very clear in this Guardian post that she is not a victim in all of this, and she'd do the ad again. She was after all chosen to be the first one in the ad, the leader of the pack of women talking about their delicate skin.
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.
