British model and activist Munroe Bergdorf has called out L’Oréal Paris after the brand made an Instagram post claiming they were “in solidarity with the Black community.” The statement arrives just three years after the major beauty corporation dropped her from an ad campaign following her outspokenness about white privilege and racism.
L’Oréal Paris posted their statement Monday morning, as part of the widespread trend of brands issuing social media posts in support of #BlackLivesMatter and the current uprising against racial injustice. “Speaking Out Is Worth It,” the post read. In the caption, the brand added they would be making an unspecified “commitment” to the NAACP “to support progress in the fight for justice. #BlackLivesMatter”
Bergdorf took to social media to criticize L’Oréal Paris for their hypocrisy. “Excuse my language but I am SO angry. FUCK YOU @lorealparis,” Bergdorf wrote her own Instagram post. “You dropped me from a campaign in 2017 and threw me to the wolves for speaking out about racism and white supremacy.”
“I had to fend for myself being torn apart by the world’s press because YOU didn’t want to talk about racism,” she continued. “You even tried to get me to incriminate myself with pairing me up with your shady lawyers, when I had done NOTHING wrong. THAT is what you get for ‘speaking out’ when employed by @lorealparis. Racist snakes.”
She concluded by urging her followers to keep L’Oréal Paris accountable for their actions. “If you care about me or #blacklivesmatter, don’t let @lorealparis get away with this,” she wrote.
Bergdorf was heralded as L’Oréal’s first transgender model before she was removed from their ad campaign over a lengthy Facebook post (that has since been deleted) about white privilege and racial injustice. The statement was written in response to the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesvile, Virginia, where one anti-racist protester was killed by a white supremacist.
