 "Dove ad")
In a Facebook ad for Dove body wash, a black woman removes her brown shirt and voilà! Underneath is a white woman in a light shirt.
But the transition from the black woman to the white women—compiled into a static collage by a social media user—evoked a long-running racist trope in soap advertising: a “dirty” black person cleansed into whiteness. (Among other examples was an ad by the N K Fairbank Company, which was in business from 1875 to 1921, that featured a white child asking a black child, “Why doesn’t your mamma wash you with Fairy soap?”)
But the transition from the black woman to the white women—compiled into a static collage by a social media user—evoked a long-running racist trope in soap advertising: a “dirty” black person cleansed into whiteness. (Among other examples was an ad by the N K Fairbank Company, which was in business from 1875 to 1921, that featured a white child asking a black child, “Why doesn’t your mamma wash you with Fairy soap?”)
