L’Oréal recently announced that their company will no longer use words like, “lightening”, “fair”, and “whitening” on the packaging of their skincare products reports Anika Khan.
The French beauty company announced on Twitter earlier this month that they stand in solidarity with the Black community.
Following this, in a statement responding to comments which called out the company for selling ‘skin lightening products’, L’Oreal said: “The L’Oreal Group has decided to remove the words white/whitening, fair/fairness, light/lightening from all its skin evening products”.
In another statement, they reiterated this by saying: “We recognise that the use of the words ‘fair’, ‘white’, and ‘light’ suggest a singular ideal of beauty that we don’t think is right, and we want to address this. As we’re evolving the way that we communicate the skin benefits of our products that deliver radiant and even tone skin, it’s also important to change the language we use.”
This also followed a public campaign to support transgender model and activist Munroe Bergdorf, who was the company’s first transgender model however was dropped in 2017 for speaking about racism and white supremacy. The company has since, in light of Black Lives Matter, rehired Munroe Bergdorf who will work with the company to oversee their equality and diversity efforts.
Companies like Unilever and Johnson & Johnson have also joined this cause and announced that they will no longer continue their skincare lines that use words like “fairness “, “white” and promote one specific beauty ideal.
