L’Oréal Sued For Refusing To Hire Non-White Models

L’Oréal is has been found guilty of racial discrimination after the cosmetic giant decided that its Fructis Style hair product would only be promoted by saleswomen who were “bleu, blanc, rouge” - a coded way of saying they wanted white, French woman. France’s La Cour de Cassation deemed L’Oréal’s hiring mandate illegal under French employment law. Thérèse Coulange, the woman who sent the fax delineating their ideal staff, says she merely meant that she wanted salespeople who were fluent in French.

Zut alors, who to believe?

This is hardly the first time the cosmetics company has been taken to task for allegedly racist practices. Previously, the company was accused of lightening both Beyoncé and Freida Pinto to the point that their respective skin colors looked markedly different from how they appear in real life and onscreen. 

The company has, however, used darker-skinned women in some of their advertisements, such as Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington.

So, does one boycott or protest against a company that promotes the white ideal of beauty if they think this will help them make more money… or does one shrug, give up and chalk this up to capitalism? 

We’ve never conducted research into it, but we doubt white women will stop buying a product because it is endorsed by a woman with dark skin or because the (presumably thin and conventionally attractive) salesperson promoting it happens to be Black or Arab or Latina or Desi or East Asian or any combination thereof. Then again, maybe in places with elevated racial tension, it does make a huge difference. Je ne sais pas, Guanabees. Either way: Sad. 

We will be extremely surprised and delighted the day a cosmetic company hires a fat, albino, short, black woman with a visible disability to schill their products. 

French cosmetics giant L’Oréal guilty of racial discrimination [Times Online]