Campaign Challenges Beauty Standards & Colorism #UnfairandLovely
Alex Whittler, CBS 2 Intern
CHICAGO (CBS) — Scores of people around the world have experienced colorism—discrimination against people with darker skin tones—and have turned to bleaching their skin to feel better about themselves.
Companies have capitalized on this insecurity by creating skin lightening creams. But a new social media campaign challenges people to embrace dark skin.
The campaign is called #UnFairandLovely. It's a spin-off of a skin whitening cream called Fair & Lovely.
The campaign launched when three University of Texas students asked dark-skinned people to post proud photos on their social media accounts. Prior to this, the students had created a photo series that focused on colorism's impact across the world and on their own lives.
The hashtag has led to mass attention on Twitter and Facebook and more than 2,500 posts on Instagram.
"I am not pretty DESPITE being dark, I am pretty BECAUSE I'm dark[.] #unfairandlovely"
"Thanks for this campaign. I am a social worker and the struggle I have gone through because of society's obsession with fairness is a nightmare."
The popular posts come on the heels of Dove correcting its "summer glow" lotion, a product whose description angered customers. The lotion label claimed to be for "normal to dark skin."
People instantly took to social media arguing that this kind of branding implies dark skin is unnatural or foreign.
"Damn man..gotta go buy something other than @Dove products because I doubt my skin tone is normal"
Via email, the #UnfairAndLovely creators told CBS 2 they created the campaign "to celebrate dark skin and to start a dialogue on global colorism."
