A little over a month ago – on Monday, October 9 – I wrote a diary about a viral meme alleging that a Dove soap ad was racist. That diary generated a great deal of negative reaction, to put it mildly. Over the next several days more information emerged about the story and it needs to be told.
Epilogue
Lola Ogunyemi, the model in the ad, speaks out
On Tuesday, October 10, the black model featured in the video and the composite of still images, published a personal op-ed in The Guardian. Lola Ogunyemi revealed new facts about the advert and her thoughts and experiences about it.
It turns out that there was a full 30-second ad intended for TV broadcast and much shorter 3-second and 13-second clips appeared on Facebook, extracts from the full ad. In the full ad, seven models appear -- of varying race, age, and body type -- and each gives a line about her use of the product. All seven models appear in a montage sequence where each pulls a shirt over her head -- as if preparing to shower -- and another model is revealed, who repeats the process. Ogunyemi is the first model in the sequence and the last of the women is revealed as Ogunyemi yet again in the eighth image, sort of a "closing the circle" effect. Ogunyemi was chosen for that leading role, the first and last model that would be seen and thus firmly anchored in the public's memory: she would have become the global face of Dove.
In her op-ed, Ogunyemi talks about the video shoot and how the women were enthusiastic about a project that would promote diversity:
I had an amazing time on set. All of the women in the shoot understood the concept and overarching objective – to use our differences to highlight the fact that all skin deserves gentleness.
I remember all of us being excited at the idea of wearing nude T-shirts and turning into one another. We weren’t sure how the final edit was going to look, nor which of us would actually be featured in it, but everyone seemed to be in great spirits during filming, including me. [1]
She emphasizes that if she had felt the project would be in any way demeaning, she would not have participated in it. Her vision was that the ad would be positive and inspiring:
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. [1]
Before the controversy hit, Ogunyemi was thrilled with the results when the finished ads were ready to roll:
I loved it. My friends and family loved it. People congratulated me for being the first to appear, for looking fabulous, and for representing Black Girl Magic. I was proud. [1]
And then somebody snipped together a few frames and circulated a new meme around the Twitterverse (my nickname for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media as a whole): the ad is racist. The internet exploded in fury and Ogunyemi's world came crashing down. She went from being the proud face of a major brand to either the unwitting victim or willing accomplice of an act of blatant racism.
She says she understands how people saw the snapshot out of context -- with accompanying text to point out that it demonstrates racism -- and that it understandably created a feeling of outrage when presented that way. But she also adds a caveat to that:
Having said that, I can also see that a lot has been left out. The narrative has been written without giving consumers context on which to base an informed opinion. [1]
As to the backlash once the meme hit cyberspace, Ogunyemi says:
While I agree with Dove’s response to unequivocally apologise for any offense caused, they could have also defended their creative vision, and their choice to include me, an unequivocally dark-skinned black woman, as a face of their campaign. [1]
She concludes her article with a powerful statement of self-determination, defining herself rather than letting herself be defined by this experience and by others' opinion of her:
I am strong, I am beautiful, and I will not be erased. [1]
In all, her piece was very balanced and thoughtful. She acknowledged the emotional impact of the controversy for many people but also provided background and context to present a different explanation of events.
I admit it, sometimes I'm slow on the uptake. The very last clause of her op-ed was intriguing but I wasn't sure what she meant by it. It didn't take long for me to figure it out though -- all I had to do was read the comments.
The erasing of Lola Ogunyemi begins
The vast majority of comments in The Guardian were positive and complimentary to Ogunyemi. However, there were plenty that were denigrating. Her defense of the ad as something positive upset quite a few people. If Oguyyemi -- clearly a smart and capable black woman who was at the very heart of the project and thus an authoritative voice about it -- denied any intent of racism then she needed to be marginalized or delegitimized: she must be erased.
Accordingly, commenters leveled various allegations against her, despite facts to the contrary.
- She's too stupid to understand [Ogunyemi earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Emory University as well as an MBA] [4]
- She's ignorant about racism in America and elsewhere [Born in the UK to parents of Nigerian heritage, she grew up in the Deep South (Georgia) and currently lives in London, itself a multi-cultural hub that has often struggled with racial issues]
- She's a sell-out, justifying the ad for the money [It's too late for that; the campaign has been scrapped and she will never collect what otherwise would have been a small fortune in residuals]
- She's self-hating and a traitor to her race [That dismisses her own words about her enthusiasm at presenting a positive image for black women everywhere]
Many of the criticisms of Ogunyemi were ever-so-politely phrased but they nevertheless sought to infantilize her or strip away her self-awareness, her first-hand experiences, or her autonomy as an intelligent and competent person. Others were downright ugly and attempted to dehumanize her with epithets like "Uncle Tom" and "house ni**er".
Lola Ogunyemi was being erased.
Lola talks to the Beeb
On Wednesday, October 11, Lola Ogunyemi appeared on the BBC for a chat with the hosts for about five minutes.
Unfortunately, I haven't found a transcript for the full interview. I did note a few highlights though.
When asked how she felt about the ad when she saw it, she said she loved it and
I thought it was fantastic. [2]
On set, when the concept was explained to the models, Ogunyemi said,
Everyone was like 'this is going to be amazing, it's going to be so cool.' [2]
In regard to Dove's removal of the ads and apology, she stated:
I understand why they apologized, to an extent, however knowing that the concept [...] was to promote diversity, [...] they could have defended that and defended their vision for the project. [2] [Note: my elliptical edits just clean up a bit of tongue-tiedness as she carefully chooses her words; they don't alter the meaning of the completed sentence]
Elaborating on the allegation of racism and Dove's reaction, Ogunyemi said:
I don't feel it was racist; however there is a case for the context of the situation and I feel that there is a position where Dove maybe could have taken that into account given that they had run into this sort of situation before. They've received backlash before for similar content that they posted. This is something that they could have -- not expected -- but they could have strong teams to point this kind of thing out before it goes to air. [2]
When asked if she would do the same ad again she replied
Yes, I would do it again. [2]
I was impressed by her. A few days earlier her dreams of a stellar modeling career were shattered, a small fortune from her potential residuals was lost, her social media accounts have been flooded with hateful accusations of being an unwitting dupe or a traitorous accomplice -- yet she goes on TV and is open, upbeat, and charming.
However, my opinion about her interview isn't universal. Again, in comments, the same kinds of charges and insults were leveled against her as in The Guardian.
Lola Ogunyemi was being erased.
The erasing goes into overdrive
The same day, in a piece published both in Time and People magazines, Karen Mizoguchi wrote about Ogunyemi's op-ed in The Guardian. The title of the article immediately sets the tone -- this is going to be a narrative that confirms racism in the ad and depicts Ogunyemi as disempowered.
Ogunyemi wrote with dignity and self-assurance, rebutting allegations that she was a helpless victim of deliberate disrespect, but Mizoguchi yanks a single sentence out of context and uses it as her title. It portrays Ogunyemi as exactly the victim she denies being: “I’m Not Just Some Silent Victim.” The Model Featured in Dove's Controversial Ad Speaks Out. In other words, Ogunyemis is a victim but she's not the type of victim who remains silent.
The article is technically accurate in that it extracts actual quotations from the op-ed. However, Mizoguchi summarizes, paraphrases, and uses selected quotations in such a way as to paint a picture pretty much the opposite of what Ogunyemi stated both in her op-ed and on the BBC.
Where Ogunyemi had expressed that she would never participate in something that was racist, Mizoguchi twists that to give the impression that Ogunyemi did exactly that and now regrets it:
She also explained how she was unaware of what the final cut of the commercial would be. Otherwise, she would not have been a part of the campaign at all. [3]
Although Ogunyemi has repeatedly expressed how much she likes the ad itself -- but not the controversy that came later -- Mizoguchi ignores that and declares the opposite. Note the use of quotation marks in a way that suggests Ogunyemi's idea of what is positive may be dubious:
Though Ogunyemi did not agree with the controversial ad, she did have a “positive” experience working with Dove. [3]
The contrast between Ogunyemi's op-ed and the Time article is disturbing. The misleading interpretation is unmistakable and deliberate.
Lola Ogunyemi was being erased.
The erasing of Lola Ogunyemi is completed
Over the first few days after this story broke, Ogunyemi's op-ed was published, she appeared on the BBC and her story was covered on CNN. Major media published articles about the incident, including Time, People, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and more.
Ogunyemi's story lasted a bit longer than Andy Warhol's quip that eventually everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. She was in the news for five days before the world and the media forgot about her entirely as they moved on to new shiny objects.
Ogunyemi isn't yesterday's news; she's not even last week's news. She has become an already forgotten footnote of history.
Lola Ogunyemi was erased.
Here on Daily Kos the story was covered by Kelly Macias when it first broke. Obviously I also wrote a diary about it with a very unpopular take on the subject. For a day or two, the story was a Very Big Deal.
Yet now, more than month later, there hasn't been a single further mention of the story. This site publishes roughly a couple of hundred diaries per day, many of them news-related (as opposed to pets, gardening, etc.). DK authors report on topical events from a vast array of media sources, especially those listed a few paragraphs up.
It strains credibility to say that the Very Big Deal of a day or two before suddenly became too unimportant and inconsequential for anyone to write a diary with the revealing details from Ogunyemi; nor is it credible to believe that everyone on DK simply missed the many stories about it on so many media platforms.
This is speculative but the only explanation I can think of that makes sense is that Ogunyemi's story was consciously discarded down the memory hole. For some, her story combined with her character and experience would undermine the collective judgment that the ad was racist and therefore should be ignored. For others, the idea of challenging the collective judgment must have been intimidating; the risk of being labeled a racist oneself or being subject to poisoning the well might have precluded any effort to get Ogunyemi's story on record at Daily Kos.
Whatever the reasons, the effect was clear: Lola Ogunyemi's story would not be told here.
Ogunyemi was not erased on Daily Kos but instead was treated even more shamefully – her very existence, as a person rather than as an object associated with wrongdoing as in the original meme circulated here, was never even acknowledged.
Lola Ogunyemi was disappeared.
The aftermath
As the saying goes, actions have consequences and often they are not consequences that we planned for or want. Following are some likely consequences of this incident, although only time will tell how accurate or not my assumptions are.
Unintended consequence #1: Lola
Lola Ogunyemi's modeling career was on the cusp of taking off in a big way. As the face of Dove, a major brand, in a successful worldwide ad campaign, incredible opportunities would have awaited her. She might have stayed with Dove for a long and profitable time – Jan Miner portrayed Palmolive's “Madge the Manicurist” for an amazing 27 years – or found deals as a spokesmodel for other well-known product lines.
Instead, she's probably considered “toxic” right now by ad directors. They know how things work; the public may not consciously recall anything about Ogunyemi but will have some vague feeling of scandal or unpleasantness associated with her due to this meme and that feeling doesn't boost sales. If she's lucky, in a year or two it may be forgotten enough for ad directors to take a chance on casting her but a “big break” like the Dove opportunity may never come her way again.
Her ad has been pulled and she has lost a potential small fortune in usage payments for it (not quite residuals but something similar when companies use a model's image and video). Those payments are negotiated not only for the U.S. market but for markets in all the countries where the ad would run; the total amount is unknown but should easily have been enough to make a huge difference in her life.
The unintended consequence of this incident for Ogunyemi is a wrecked career and loss of significant income.
Unintended consequence #2: Lola's colleagues
As above, everyone else involved in the Dove project will have lost income and/or career opportunities. Like Ogunyemi, the other models lost their usage payments. Both models and production staff will not be able to use this shoot as a credit when competing for other jobs because it would be a negative rather than a positive reference. The white model in the circulated meme will likely be considered “toxic” for a period for the same reason as I provided regarding Ogunyemi.
Unintended consequence #3: Diversity in future advertising
Ad directors and marketing VPs are likely to learn the “wrong” lesson from this debacle. Dove attempted to celebrate diversity in its ad, including models of varying race. A major ad campaign such as this undoubtedly went through a vetting process, both in-house and with focus groups (no, big corporations do not turn over a multi-million dollar global marketing buy to a nameless intern).
The system didn't work to prevent the manufactured controversy that arose. It did not just not work, it can never work to prevent such a thing. It's simply not possible for anyone to imagine the myriad of ways in which someone might deconstruct, edit, or otherwise manipulate text, video, and images in such a way as to present a false impression of the original material.
To dramatically underscore this point, consider that this ad campaign ran for a month around the world. That means tens of millions of people – the world's largest focus group – saw the ad and entirely missed the alleged racism in it. In this age of instant memes, we can be sure of that; had people noted racist content the news would have flashed through the Twitterverse long before the manufactured meme showed up (and it did not, I did an exhaustive search on that timeline). In fact, it’s quite likely some of you saw the ad on TV and don’t even remember it (that’s how advertising works, sinking into our brains and we don’t even notice it).
So there is no way to eliminate the possibility that someone will juxtapose images, slice away context, or highlight an otherwise innocuous moment and inject nefarious meaning to it. The tricks of that trade are priming and confirmation bias: tell people what to expect to see and then their observation and interpretation will match the desired expectation.
[By the way, that black-and-white image of a duck above? It's actually a rabbit; the “bills” of the duck are the rabbit's ears. I used priming to tell you what to see by means of a caption. The odds are that more of you saw a duck than a rabbit, although without priming the ratio should be 50/50 for either image to be perceived. Had it been something with gut-level emotional impact – racism, homophobia, abuse of puppies, etc. – the desired response rate would have shot sky high as our limbic brain (emotion processing) overrode our neocortex (logic processing).]
Thus, if I were an ad director, I would figure out how to protect myself and my company. The solution is easy: segregated advertising. I would use models of varying races in my ads but I would be sure they were in separate ads. One ad might feature a black family, another would have a couple of white friends, another would have three latino/a work colleagues, and so on. There would still be diversity in terms of the total demographics but zero risk of charges of bias related to the (non-existent) relationships or interactions of the diverse models.
Most people would probably never even notice. We already have monocultural ads frequently enough. If mixed ads disappeared but the overall quantity of white, black, brown and other faces remained the same, we would likely be oblivious to the change.
But is that unintended consequence – separate but equal advertising – one that we want? Instead of unity and togetherness, do we want the subliminal message beamed into our eyeballs day and night to be that life is best if the races do not mix?
Unintended consequence #4: Friends and allies
Long ago, when the internet was but a glimmer in the eye of Tim Berners-Lee and others, being an activist meant affiliating oneself with sundry advocacy organizations, such as the NAACP, NOW, or GLAAD. Whether they were national or local, those groups developed knowledge of and relationships with politicians, companies, regulatory bodies, and so on. They knew who supported them, as friends and allies, and those who opposed their goals.
When problems arose, those organizational leaders relied on their experience to deal with them accordingly. An active long-time opponent would be treated very differently than a long-time ally who had merely made a mistake but had a history of support and cooperation.
The Twitterverse doesn't know nor does it care about history and experience. Any error – accidental, intentional, or manufactured – is treated with the exact same demand for extreme punishment: “Fire the CEO! Boycott the company!” There is no nuance and no effort to work out a resolution that accommodates all parties and considers circumstances and intentions.
If I were a CEO and saw how these things have played out in recent times, I might very well adopt a dismissive attitude toward everyone and everything. I would see that one competitor – who has never made any effort to support social causes – has actually suffered no PR damage but another – who consistently tried but had a slip-up or two – was forced out of his job and his company driven nearly to bankruptcy. The lesson I would learn is that it doesn't pay to try to be a good corporate citizen: better to just do nothing and keep my head down rather than make a good-faith effort and still be pilloried for real or perceived failure.
The Twitterverse's instant response, coupled with its ignorance and lack of informed and planned direction, may have a longterm unintended consequence: corporations may find that it is safer to remain on the neutral sidelines of social causes and issues rather than risk the wrath and backlash of being a friend and ally who made a mistake.
Afterword
Marching boldly toward Idiocracy
Originally this diary had another huge section, adding several thousand words as an “autopsy” of this fiasco. I reviewed the many warning signs about the meme that should have alerted people to be wary of it, explained its mysteriously untraceable multiple origins, analyzed the crucial steps that were missed which would have likely rendered it mostly harmless, how to better handle the constant stream of input, the necessity of examining assumptions, and so on.
Then I realized: why bother? Some people already have developed their own guidelines for dealing with potentially explosive memes that attempt to trigger a gut-level emotional reaction in the reader – they don't really need my two cents of advice on the subject.
Others wouldn't put my suggestions to use anyway. I've already written diaries with most of those recommendations, albeit with far less detail. In fact, I'd written two in the two weeks prior to this incident and it apparently had zero positive effect. The emotional response that false memes create is simply too overpowering and seductive – that's because your emotions are very real, it's just the causal basis for those emotions that is false.
The Twitterverse is the modern era's reinvention of old-time gospel's tent revival meetings. Instead of waiting for the show to arrive near your town once or twice a year, it awaits you 24 hours per day every day of the year. You can join in with not just a few hundred or even a few thousand believers but with millions and millions. You can confess your sins in public and receive redemption and praise for your honesty. You can denounce the sins of others – the more appalling they are the better – and millions will join you in an outpouring of wrath and scorn. You can reaffirm the purity of your beliefs and feel uplifted by warm waves of approval and shared dedication.
Advice to be coolly calculating and analytical about gut-punching internet memes is weak sauce compared to that. Nope, this is our future, where our emotions are played around the clock like a finely tuned fiddle, for good or for evil. For most people, even a stern self-resolve to be more cautious the next time an Irresistible Shiny Object of Outrage (ISOO) presents itself will collapse instantly with the certainty that “This time it's different, I feel absolutely sure this one is real!”
In the Twitterverse's tent revival, time is of the essence. There is simply no time to spare for searching out more information or waiting to see if news develops on its own. You don't get those “Hallelujah!s” from the crowd if you respond a week later after you're sure you have all of the facts: the Twitterverse has moved on to other ISOOs by that time and may barely recall what you're talking about. No, if you want to shake your fist at the devil and feel in harmony with the congregation, you have to do it right now along with everyone else.
And each time, the Twitterverse will roil more clamorously, like in the children's song:
Second verse same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse.
Every time that we are successfully manipulated toward a desired response in the Twitterverse – and then promptly forget it and move on to the next ISOO – it gets a little easier. After all, social media has been designed from the ground up to manipulate our emotions and behavior and create a psychological addiction in us. As Sean Parker, one of the founders of Facebook, put it:
It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.
All of us are jacked into this system. All of our minds can be hijacked. Our choices are not as free as we think they are. [5]
Things will only get worse. With millions of items of content shared and liked and tweeted every day to 3.2 billion users around the world, people are overwhelmed. You can't keep up if you try to scrutinize every item that lands in your social media circles. It's both easier and more emotionally satisfying to just join in with everyone else and keep things flowing.
The Left has so far been less likely to be manipulated as frequently or readily as the Right. My thesis is that that has been mostly due to lack of opportunity rather than any particular trait on our side. Rightwing political and social leaders, foreign governments, disgruntled trolls, and others have played the Right to gain advantage; when our leaders or other governments or trolls decide to target us with the same intensity, I suspect that we will be only slightly less susceptible.
The tools for manipulation work just as readily on both sides, but with different stimuli (for example, racist allegations trigger our emotions but godless atheism allegations trigger theirs). The only qualitative difference is that the items targeted toward us need to have some plausibility (much of the Right doesn't require even possibility). Plausible, however, doesn't mean true or verified or even probable – that crucial difference will be the key to successful exploits.
Remember that with priming, someone with ill intent can provoke genuine emotions in most people of the targeted group with relatively high accuracy and penetration. Your emotions are real; it’s the provocation, or causal basis, that is false. With confirmation bias, we will perceive what we are meant to perceive, regardless of the original meaning.
Cardinal Richelieu, who ruthlessly ruled France nearly 400 years ago, famously said that he could find something to justify hanging a man if he had but six lines of text written by that man — any six lines, because he could squeeze out whatever meaning he chose. If he were alive today, I could imagine his well-known quote going more like this:
If you give me six seconds of video taken by anyone, I will find something in it to make the Twitterverse explode with rage.
Expect an increasing flood of Left-targeted fake news, manufactured controversy, poutrage, disinformation, weaponized information, propaganda, agitprop, or whatever you want to call the methods and results of such activity. And expect it to work. It will.
Yeah, bummer, huh? So what's the solution? I don't have one. Human nature being what it is – and social media being as ubiquitous and deeply integrated in our lives as it is – I can't foresee anything other than some variation of Idiocracy in the future, but hopefully with a remnant of people who retain and use critical thinking skills. Sorry if you hoped for an uplifting projected end to the tale but I can't give you one; if we're lucky, perhaps the story will take off in an unexpected twist and conclude differently.
Much ado about something
Congratulations, you've almost reached the end of this apparently interminable screed. There's still just one more thing to cover: responsibility.
This controversial meme seemingly burst out of nowhere. I can't track it back and find an individual to hold accountable but I can nevertheless assign responsibility for the fiasco: it goes to us, the Left.
Why focus on what could be considered a fairly trivial matter when there are so many other major issues to confront (celebrity sexual assaults, immigrant children being deported, genocide in Burma, everything Trump, and more)? Why not just forget about it? There are two reasons.
- First, it might be trivial to you but it certainly hasn't been trivial to Lola Ogunyemi and her colleagues. The least we can do is acknowledge the difficulties or damage this incident has wreaked in their lives.
- Second, those other big issues are things we fight against. We, as the Left, usually try to mitigate or prevent those misdeeds; we don't encourage and enable their occurrence. In this matter, however, it's different: we own this disaster lock, stock, and barrel. We made this happen.
For the Right, perceived racism would be a bonus, not a problem; it was the Left that responded with instant outrage and zero investigation. Had our side taken a critical look, waited for more information to be unearthed, and noted the warning signs about the meme and put it on pause, the results would have been quite different.
Yet we didn't do that. Nor have we taken any responsibility for it since then. We simply moved on, uncaring about the consequences that affect those involved and uninterested in reflecting on our actions to promote more caution and consideration in the future. In short, we redefined the so-called Pottery Barn Rule to be: “We broke it, you paid for it, now go away and we will pretend this never happened.”
We ruined the career of a strong, smart, and capable woman and cost her a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She didn't sign up to be some kind of pointless martyr to a cause; she was thrust into a role that was created for her by our actions and responses and she paid the price for that, not us. We should at least know who she is and what her story was; she merits more than being erased from our history.
Her name is Lola Ogunyemi.
References
[1] I am the woman in the 'racist Dove ad'. I am not a victim by Lola Ogunyemi at The Guardian
[2] BBC interview of Lola Ogunyemi, partially transcribed by Krotor
[3] 'I’m Not Just Some Silent Victim.' The Model Featured in Dove's Controversial Ad Speaks Out by Karen Mizoguchi at Time
[4] Model in 'racist' Dove ad says it was misinterpreted: 'I am not a victim' by Samantha Schmidt at the Chicago Tribune
[5] Ex-Facebook president Sean Parker: site made to exploit human 'vulnerability' by Olivia Solon at The Guardian