Shea Moisture Accused Of Whitewashing With Hair Hate Video

For the naturals…

Shea Moisture Blasted For “Hair Hate” Video Featuring White Women

A popular natural hair care brand is getting the BUSINESS on social media for an “inclusive” ad that seemingly excluded black women. Shea Moisture which has been used by naturalistas for years is getting blasted for their #EverybodyGetsLove campaign featuring women dishing on their previous issues with their hair.

The ad, however, features only one woman of a color, alongside a redhead and a blonde woman who both whine about their issues with their tresses.

“It was lots of days staring in the mirror feeling like ‘I don’t know what to do with it,'” said one. “I just didn’t feel like I was supposed to be a redhead,” added another.

Wow!

People are now up in arms including women with 4A, 4B and 4C hair textures who didn’t see themselves represented in the video.

Is Shea Moisture’s ad fair or foul???

More on the flip.

Getty Images

UPDATE: Shea Moisture’s apologized for “f*** it up.”

It’s worth mentioning that an extended version of the Shea Moisture ad looks to be more inclusive and features natural hair blogger Jenell B. Stewart who has a kinkier hair texture. That video was released March 28.

Shea Moisture is defending themselves against claims that they’ve rebranded and are solely marketing to white people because they don’t “need black women anymore.”
“This is completely not true, ladies. Have you seen any of our videos, especially our Break The Walls video?” said the brand on Facebook.

Shea Moisture previously released a statement when they were accused of selling out with their “Break The Walls” ad.

On April 6 they wrote:

As for the “rebranding” claim, there’s not much to say there other than it’s inaccurate.

We’re proud of who we are, how we got here – and most importantly, who got us here. For a long time, we said that the only place in America where segregation was still legal was the beauty aisle.

So we waited 16 years to bring our products to retail because we refused to operate within a system where our community was not served well with choice, access or inclusion. Let’s be clear. Separate but equal has never worked in any arena, including beauty.

So, we were proud with Break the Walls to tell the stories of so many women who ever experienced being underserved by the beauty industry – and we will continue to tell those stories (and by the way, that social post with that cute little white baby, was posted more than a year before we launched Break the Walls, so no correlation there – but really, how can anyone hate an innocent child?