In our discussions of advertising and race, I was struck by how people of color were—and are—often the “before” part of a “before and after.” One only needs to think of Victorian advertisements where someone gets into the bath Black and comes out white. In this case, the whitewashing is literal. Racism was a pervasive issue throughout Victorian advertisements for hygiene, such as these:
As much as we would like to imagine that we live in a world much less tainted by racism, these kinds of whitewashing are still present in ads today. A 2020 haircare ad in South Africa described Black hair as “damaged” and white hair as “normal.”
An offensive haircare advert shows Black South Africans still have to fight apartheid’s race battles
This has made me wonder how many ads I’ve seen that have portrayed the natural features of people of color as undesirable because they’re been pitted against the white beauty standard. What other examples of this have you seen from the Victorian era until now?
Victorian Visual Culture 
I love that you included a modern day example as so often we think we have left these uncomfortable truths in the past. We always need to make sure we are doing the work fighting this normalization of racist attitudes.
By: Angel Crow on September 25, 2025
at 12:19 pm