Nigerian model featured in controversial racist Dove Ad defends it

The Nigerian model who appeared in a racially insensitive advertisement for soap company Dove which many social media users denounced as racist has defended the clip, saying that far from belittling black women, the clip celebrated ethnic diversity.

Lola Ogunyemi who is the face of the campaign surprisingly found herself at the centre of an international furore over a 30-second video posted on Dove's US Facebook page which showed her removing her t-shirt to reveal a white woman, who then took hers off to reveal an Asian woman.

I don't feel it was racist, she said in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday.

Many Facebook and Twitter users said the clip signalled that white people were cleaner or more beautiful than black people and likened it to 19th century soap adverts that showed black people scrubbing themselves to become white.

But Ogunyemi said the stills from the clip that shot around the internet over the weekend - which mostly showed only her and the white woman, leaving out the Asian woman - gave the wrong impression.

She said there was a 3-second, made-for-TV version that had other images and a slogan that made it much clearer that the intention was to say that all women deserved quality products.

The screenshots that have taken the media by storm paint a slightly different picture, she said.

Dove, which is owned by Dutch-British transnational consumer goods company Unilever, apologized and removed the campaign, saying that it "missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully."

Ogunyemi, who is Nigerian, born in Britain and raised in the United States, said in an article in the Guardian that she had "grown up very aware of society's opinion that dark-skinned people, especially women, would look better if our skin were lighter".

Far from fitting into this narrative, she wrote, her participation in the Dove advert was a chance to "represent my dark-skinned sisters in a global beauty brand".

She said Dove could have defended itself by better explaining the concept behind the clip.