Woke up on a sunny Wednesday morning, checked my email and what do you know... yet another reminder that Black women are underrated. If you follow me over on Instagram Stories then you know I received an email from Planoly (as did hundreds of thousands of others) sharing their Favorite Moms for Mother's Day. Love the gesture because Moms really deserve the recognition so I excitedly scrolled the list to see if there was anyone I recognized, anyone I could relate to... you know, anyone that looked like ME. And, to my surprise there was not ONE black woman. First thought was that this must be a mistake because all the bomb ass Black Bloggers who are Moms that I know of, one of them had to make the list. Scrolled again but nope. Not one. I'm tired of this shit so I shared my frustration over on Instagram Stories AND tagged Planoly. And, not that fake tag that everyone knows isn't really tagging anyone. Nah, I made sure it had that underline so that they would see my story because I need to know HOW + WHY nobody who looked like me made your list.
PLANOLY'S RESPONSES
 |
| removed information that included actual name(s) |
Okay, now that we're all caught up let's recap. This is yet another 'mistake' where 'we' were left out but unintentionally, of course. You know sometimes you have to force something before it becomes habit. So if every company (that is or may have an issue with this) has to set forth a protocol that requires them to always include Blacks in order for it to become INTENTIONAL then so be it. Because how many mistakes and mishaps are going to happen if proper procedures aren't put in place so it doesn't happen again? Now moving on to Brandy Pham's response, Founder + Creative Director of Planoly. I will speak for myself when I say that Asians are WOC, yes, but they do not look like me. Instead of (4) White, (1) Asian and (1) Racially Ambiguous (not sure what her race is... could we not have found one (God forbid TWO) black Mom(s) to throw in there? There is nothing wrong with all WOC (Women of Color) including Asians being used, but my issue is that none of the women in the Promo Email look like ME. With ALL the Black creatives who are Mother's like myself, you mean to tell me that we couldn't find ONE?!
Lastly, the Email header is yet another coined term from black culture: "We Got it From Our Momma"! I kid you not...
I can overstand a Momma needing to go on Maternity leave and take care of their babies... shoot, I've done it 3 times! Besides yourself, someone (if not multiple people) on your team should have caught this. This is part of the problem!! Not enough people in these decision making meetings are seeing this as a problem. I received numerous responses about building our own table to sit at and that's all well + good. There are quite a few tables already built by women who like me or are currently being built but I'm getting tired of having to boycott businesses left and right. It sounds to me like Planoly made a poor judgement call in the selection of Bloggers chosen for this email BUT there has to be a way to stop this from happening over and over and over again. That's the part that is wearing at me... the constant "oops" "our bad" "we made a mistake" "we'll do better". JUST DO BETTER!
I'm sore as hell from working out last night, moody from cutting sweets + incorporating a better diet and now THIS. Candice didn't need this today. NOT today.
Lets chat soon.
XOXO
The bottom line is we are a society of many different people so why shouldn't out lifestyle, brands, ads, commercials , etc reflect that? Do Indians, Native Americans, Latinos or any of the other raves out here see themselves represented either? NO! The dolls are white, magazine covers are white and the list goes on and on...smh.
ReplyDeletewow!! At the risk of sounding like my grandma right now, “you know what they sayin dontcha’ they are saying y’all ain’t never satisfied” I hate to think that’s what they are thinking but I can’t stand responses that seem contrived or generic .. did you not edit and have to see the post before it was published ? So in that time no one thought to say wow there’s no one on here that adds “diversity” to this .. or no one could find their “one black friend” to say hey I was wondering if you would like to be. Featured on our mothers post considering you have shown me all the cool things to keep us relevant... nope nowhere to be found ... they get upset when we say we will just make our own then it’s us trying to divide smh ����♀️ I see this a lot with other races like Hispanic women who get around a few white girls then all of a sudden they are too good for their own to the point of disassociation but they don’t know they tallkin about them just like the others ..
ReplyDelete