Twitter Is Accusing Emma Watson of Endorsing Skin Bleaches
Some Twitter users are really upset about finding an ad from 2011 featuring Emma Watson in a campaign for Lancome’s Blanc Expert Melanolyser.
The product is designed to help prevent “dark spots in the skin, associated with age and exposure to the sun,” but fans of the Harry Potter actress are upset that she’d promote any type of product suggesting a need for lighter skin.
The campaign resurfaced after a website called Gal-Dem posted an essay titled, “Perfect Whiteness: The Code Switching of European Cosmetic Companies,” citing Watson as part of the problem with brands selling “whiteness” to women around the world. Naomi Mabita, the essay’s author, wrote:
Do an image search of ad campaigns and you’ll quickly out find how widespread this practice of equating facial perfection to “whiteness” is. Emma Watson, forever paraded in the media as a white feminist icon, is the face of Lancôme’s “Blanc Expert” (Expert White) which contains disruptive ingredients intended to whiten the skin.
The Daily Mail posted a number of Twitter responses expressing her fans disappointment, mostly citing the hypocrisy of her position as a feminist.
“I’ve been rooting for Emma Watson since I was a child, but her advocacy of skin bleaching products & the underlying racism is indefensible,” one wrote. “In endorsing skin bleaching products, Emma Watson endorses the hierarchy of race, colourism, and the inherent whiteness of beauty standards.Call me naïve, but I am crushed that Emma Watson is the face of skin bleaching products. That her feminism only extends to white women.”
Watson, who was also named the UN Goodwill Women’s Ambassador in 2011, has yet to respond.
