L’Oreal is the latest brand making changes to its products in wake of national and global protests against police brutality and racism following the death of George Floyd.
The French cosmetics company announced Friday that it would no longer use words like “fair” and “whitening” in its products.
“The L’Oreal Group has decided to remove the words white/whitening, fair/fairness, light/lightening from all its skin evening products,” the company said in a statement.
On Thursday, two other companies -- Hindustan Unilever and Johnson & Johnson, announced changes to their products in India. The former, the Indian subsidiary of Unilever, said it would "stop using the word 'Fair’” on its “Fair and Lovely” skincare line. The change is in effort to move toward a “more inclusive vision of beauty.”
Johnson & Johnson said it discontinued to lines of skincare products that have the word “fairness” on its label.
"Conversations over the past few weeks highlighted that some product names or claims on our Dark Spot Reducer products represent fairness or white as better than your own unique skin tone," Johnson & Johnson said in a statement. "This was never our intention — healthy skin is beautiful skin."
Earlier this month, L'Oreal tweeted it "stands in solidarity with the Black community, and against injustice of any kind."
English model Munroe Bergdorf called out the brand, saying they fired her when she spoke out about racism.
"You dropped me from a campaign in 2017 and threw me to the wolves for speaking out about racism and white supremacy," Bergdorf wrote in an Instagram post in response to L'Oreal's tweet. "I said just yesterday that it would only be a matter of time before RACIST ... brands saw a window of PR opportunity to jump on the bandwagon ... I'm disgusted and writing this in floods of tears and shaking."
Bergdorf has since been rehired by the brand and will be part of a U.K. Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Board.
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