Old Navy Ads Excluding POC's

 Old Navy Ads Excluding People of Color

Oh no, Old Navy.

So when I first saw the new Old Navy commercial featuring the song Save that money by Lil Dicky, Fetty Wap and Rich Homie Quan I was a little excited. Don’t get me wrong Fetty and Rich Homie Quan are not the cornerstone of black music, but for artist who make trap music to be featured in probably one of the whitest clothing companies ad is like “Hey we’re super white but we want to appeal to a more diverse audience.” Tisk, tisk, tisk, I should have known old navy has a habit of doing this.

 

 A Closer Look  

As I continued to watch the commercial they proved me wrong, (silly me, thought I had a friend) because there's not a single black person in the commercial, this might be one of the whitest commercials I’ve seen in awhile. You know what I take that back, that was incorrect of me to say. There is one biracial girl in the commercial. Did you see her, or did you miss the first time too. See she’s right here hidden in plain sight.

I almost missed her (and did the first couple of times). I’m not going to take away the fact that she is black, because she is, but she’s the type of black white people like. Damn near white. Almost all of her features are of European descent and then they have the nerve to cut her hair into an “Afro”. As a natural haired black woman I find this sooooooooo offensive. The natural hair movement is going in a positive direction, but now we face the curl pattern issue. Everyone wants a loose curl, one that you usually find on a biracial black woman. That is not reality for the majority of natural black women. We need to praise all curl patterns and continued images like this are not helping.

The media also has a habit of substituting genuine and easy to see black women, and also other women of color, for biracial, fair skin biracial, and light skin toned women of color.  While I am glad that white people are some what embracing biracial people, that does not mean they can replace the entire black race with them. 

Now let's take a very brief moment to talk about interracial dating. Not only could they not hire a black woman, they paired to only woman of color (their stand in black woman) with a white man. They are clearly supposed to be dating because they’re holding hands. Why is that when there is a “black woman” she can’t be with a black man and vise versa? Like all black women are supposed to aspire to one day marry a white man and have beautiful biracial babies and vice versa. But I’m not going to dive into that abbess today, we’ll come back to that at a later date. And just in case you don’t believe me check out how black couples almost never exist in especially old navy commercials.

Yes, It Is a Big Deal

It may seem like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill but these little things add up. Who the media chooses to represent black men and women matters. They need to be held responsible. They allow their advertisement to continue to reinforce the European standard of beauty being the only standard of beauty despite the negative affects on POC. I don't see myself being properly represented, I shop at Old Navy, it would nice if they acknowledge that their shoppers are not all white and biracial. Women of color are beautiful in every shade and that is what needs to be shown. We cannot be blind to this misrepresentation. We have to continue to positively define the standard beauty to include all POC's (with all different types of curl patterns). And to all my women and men of color don't be ignorant to there tactics, do not be satisfied with there "attempts" to be inclusive.