The New York Daily News reported on Naomi Campbell’s latest rant involving Cadbury’s use of her name in a print ad. Campbell insists the message is racist. It’s actually not the first time Campbell has objected to being referred to as chocolate, so at least she’s consistent. Not sure how she’d react to the Cadbury Gorilla video.
Naomi Campbell may sue Cadbury for using her name in ‘racist’ chocolate ads
By Lindsay Goldwert, Daily News Staff Writer
Supermodel Naomi Campbell has some not-so-sweet words for Cadbury – You are racist.
The 39 year-old supermodel is furious and offended that the chocolate company used her name in an ad for their Dairy Milk Bliss bar.
“Move over, Naomi, there’s a new diva in town,” the ad copy reads. “I’m the world’s most pampered bar.”
“I am shocked. It’s upsetting to be described as chocolate, not just for me, but for all black women and black people,” she said, according to the Independent. “I do not find any humor in this. It is insulting and hurtful.”
Campbell is reportedly considering “every option available” after Cadbury, owned by the US giant Kraft, refused to pull the ad campaign, which ran in newspapers last week.
Activist groups in the U.K. are calling on people to boycott the brand.
Simon Woolley of the group Operation Black Vote told the Independent that he has written to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in the U.S. “I want them to know what their parent company is doing in Europe. I’ve asked them to support us.”
Woolley said that ads like Cadbury’s are even more galling in light of President Barack Obama’s visit to the U.K. last week.
“It’s particularly galling because we’ve just had a week that saw the establishment fall over themselves to be close to the Obamas and yet black people are being derided in such an insulting and negative way,” he said.
A spokesperson for Cadbury insisted that while the ad campaign was “a light-hearted take on the social pretensions of Cadbury Dairy Milk Bliss,” the campaign was “no longer in circulation.”
The ad was likely referencing Campbell’s infamous anger issues.
The model pleaded guilty to assaulting a pair of police officers in 2008 at Heathrow Airport in London. A year earlier, Campbell pleaded guilty to hitting her housekeeper with a crystal-studded BlackBerry. She was also accused of slapping and beating her assistant with a cell phone in 2005 and pleaded guilty in 1998 to assaulting another assistant with a telephone.
Still, Woolley thinks the company should be ashamed of itself.
“Racism in the playground starts with black children being called ‘chocolate bar’. At best, this is insensitive, and at worst it demonstrates Cadbury’s utter disregard for causing offence,” he said. “Its lack of apology just adds insult to injury. The Eurocentric joke is not funny to black people.”
I think that the photo absolutely does diminish the validity of her outrage. The use of “chocolate” as a stand-in for black is especially prevalent in sexualized images of women of African descent. There is certainly a legitimate cultural criticism that can be leveled against such an association. But when someone like Naomi Campbell profits from it from one side of her mouth and then rails against it as racist when she isn’t being compensated, I do definitely think the “validity” of the outrage is in question.
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