The image above is the tweet that alerted many people to the new Dove ad in which, apparenly, black people can clean themselves up and become white people!

When I first saw this ad, I was flabbergasted and assumed I had it wrong. I assumed that I simply misunderstood the ad, or it was a parody, or something. This, I thought, could not be happening. Then, I finally settled into the fact that Dove managed to produce a deeply disturbing, racist ad.

But then, I learned that this is actually an add in which the Colors of Benetton do a big strip tease, but in an unfortunate order in which everyone strips down to the next Master Race in line. What the tweet does not show is the next part of the ad, in which the white lady takes off her magic ethno-shirt and becomes Asian. I’ve still not seen that part of the ad, it has been scrubbed from the Internet. But that’s what I hear.

So now the ad is understandable, but ham fisted and stupidly racist. And overethnicized, and a few other things. But, that could all be a randomization mistake. Maybe they needed to add more people and more shirts and have a few surprises, like someone with a tattoo on the neck that goes down to the shirt, and something with hair, and maybe the green lady from Star Trek. And, just as I was thinking maybe Dove simply screwed up by accident, somebody showed me this ad:

Then, I was like, OK, Dove. Please check with somebody before you do this again.

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