“I didn’t know moisturizers even varied in their formulation based on skin tone. I thought it was oily vs dry. So how is skin tone even relevant?”
There are tinted moisturizers to even out the skin tone (age spots, anyone?). One would want the product that closely resembles her natural skin tone - many shades are usually available. Not just for “whites.”
If it’s tinted, go for Fair to Medium, Medium to Dark or whatever. Not “normal.”
I seriously have no idea what product was actually advertised and what the ad was suppose to mean. Just pointing out to people who were wondering what skin tone had to do with formulation.
Sorry BB, meant that as a tag-on to what you said. I wasn’t trying to poke at you or anything 
Think about what the word “abnormal” implies. As if black and brown skin is “not normal”, weird or an aberration.
Do you think that is how a person with brown or black skin would want to be called?
Actually, “normal” can refer to skin tone if we are talking about a single individual. Meaning “usual”. My skin tone varies quite a bit depending on sun exposure. It makes me keep a set of three tints: one for beach vacation-darker, one for deep winter-fair, and one for summer gardening/running-normal-for-me tone. Don’t we all have that problem? Sunblock only prevents damage, it does not prevent this tone variation.
Can’t see how “normal” can be applied to a group of individuals - there is too much tone variation even within a small group.
I have brown skin and always have. It is normal to me and dry. I did think about this thread when shopping for moisturizer yesterday at both the drug store and grocery store. I bought lubriderm because they had 3oz size, which is perfect for travel. I didn’t notice whether any of the lotions mentioned “normal” or skin tones. Generally I buy lotions and creams that mention dry skin and are white in color.
Maybe the things I buy are lower end so don’t have foundation or coloring mixed in?
I have no problem with the concept of normal skin, in terms of dryness, but not in terms of color. We understand this distinction with hair, surely.
With hair I’ve mainly read about qualities–straight, fine, curly, damaged, treated, etc. as well as oily, dry and yea, NORMAL.
Dove needs to hire a $15 teenage minority woman intern to catch this kind of stuff. I say woman and not man because guys are probably like, “whatever”. And I say intern because it doesn’t take a 100k salary to see the issues. But I’m pretty sure any minority female college student would’ve taken one look and said, “ummm, guys?”
The commercial was strange enough but Fair to Normal and Normal to Dark? We are the vampire skin range but what is normal?
@sciencenerd Perhaps I should have put (/sarcasm) to make my meaning clearer.
I think a college intern may be too intimidated to raise any issues that might make her “stand out.”
I agree that ‘normal’ was a poor word choice, but look at it this way… ‘normal’ also excludes white people who have very white skin.
^The people who arrive at the beach at 3 pm.
^ Exactly :))
^^^ That would be me! And I’d still have a hat and white stuff on my nose. See, I’ve never been ‘normal’ and yet have never taken offense. Guess I just don’t know when I’m being insulted.
I have my well person check up next week. Being ‘well’ would make me normal. Expect that my 'normal body temp is about 97.3. I am of ‘normal’ weight for my height and have very normal blood values. I’ll let the doc. know that I am insulted. And that by default the doc is calling everyone outside of ‘normal’ abnormal.
^ We really do that. Arrive at 3 like the vampire family. My youngest had to wear a full body sun romper to the beach when he was little. Like going to the beach in a hazardous waste suit.
An individual can have THEIR normal, but a company to say one shade of skin is “normal” is backwards, outdated, and just rude. I don’t know what isn’t self-evident about this.
Even if you want to say that it’s just an “average” skin tone- what the hell does that mean? The “average” skin tone for Detroit is going to be different than the one for Anchorage. I couldn’t even guess at the “average” skin tone for the US as a whole let alone how I compare to that.
If anyone really can’t figure out why “normal” as a skin tone could be problematic, I implore you to go read a history book.
This artist makes tiles of every skin color he has encountered.
http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/byron-kim/21
I was at a lecture where the image was put up on a large screen. Frankly, it should have come with a trigger warning for anyone who has any remote history with a particular time and place in history (hint - Germany 1940’s). Anyway, my first gut reaction was to shield my eyes because it looked JUST LIKE the pallets of skin tones on display in certain camps. They were used as identifiers.
That was MY reaction. However, this artist is is held in high enough esteem to warrant a permanent display in the National Gallery. And obviously the artist had a different intent. And it appears that at least in this case INTENT mattered.
The point, if you want to be insulted or find insult you can. Or, you can just get on with your life.
No…I’m not registering a complaint with the displaying gallery. When I pointed out the clear and obvious similarity between the ‘art’ and the pallets on display elsewhere the curator was horrified.
I guess is you wanted to define ‘normal’ you’d make a liquid paint version of each of the tiles and mix it into a big vat. The end result would be the norm.