The soap brand Dove is facing calls for a boycott after a controversial Black Lives Matter activist revealed she is partnering with the beauty brand as an “ambassador” to promote “fat liberation.”
The activist, Zyahna Bryant, made headlines in 2020 for her efforts to get a white University of Virginia student expelled for making what Bryant deemed to be “threatening” comments about a group of Black Lives Matter protesters. She later acknowledged that she likely “misheard” the student — but not before campaigning to get her suspended from campus.
Bryant revealed on Instagram late last month that she is partnering with Dove.
“My belief is that we should be centering the voices and the experiences of the most marginalized people and communities at all times,” she said in a video announcing the partnership. “So, when I think about what fat liberation looks like to me, I think about centering the voices of those who live in and who maneuver through spaces and institutions in a fat body.”
Some social-media users have started calling for a boycott. On Thursday, the X page, End Wokeness, posted about the partnership, writing that Bryant “Bryant ruined a white girl’s life over a non-existent remark.” Elon Musk weighed in as well, writing on X that the partnership was “Messed up.”
Before becoming a Dove ambassador, Bryant was best known as a BLM activist who campaigned to get UVA student Morgan Bettinger expelled over a misheard remark.
The incident began in the summer of 2020 when Bettinger drove down a street in Charlottesville, Va., where a BLM protest was happening. She kept driving after seeing a dump truck partially blocking the road, but when she realized the road was blocked off, she parked her car to see what was happening, she told Reason.
Bettinger briefly spoke to the truck driver and told him, “It’s a good thing that you are here because otherwise these people would have been speed bumps.” The truck driver confirmed that is what Bettinger told him in a statement to police.
Bryant, having overheard a bit of the conversation, posted on Twitter that Bettinger said protesters “would make ‘good speedbumps'” and shared a video of Bettinger driving away from the street in her car. “She then called the police and started crying, saying we were attacking her,” Bryant said.
Bryant quickly took up a campaign to get Bettinger expelled from school, filing a complaint with the University Judiciary Committee, claiming Bettinger had threatened students’ health and safety. “EMAIL these UVA deans now to demand that Morgan face consequences for her actions and that UVA stop graduating racists,” she wrote in a tweet.
The student-run disciplinary system found Bettinger guilty of threatening protesters without any evidence.
Bryant filed a separate complaint with the school’s Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights, which found that three of Bryant’s five accusation’s could not be proven. A report found Bryant most likely did not hear Bettinger’s comment firsthand.
While Bettinger was ultimately allowed back at school, Bryant’s allegations resulted in a notation in Bettinger’s permanent record that she faced disciplinary actions over her alleged comments. Bettinger has voiced concern that the note in her file may hurt her chances of getting into law school as she had planned.
The controversy over Bryant’s partnership with Dove had led social-media users to post pictures of their soap bars in the trash. The Dove brand is owned by Unilver, a British multinational corporation.
Dove’s partnership with Bryant is reminiscent of Bud Light’s decision to launch a minor creative collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, whose Instagram video in a bathtub surrounded by the iconic blue cans led many conservatives to boycott the beer brand.
The fallout has become so widespread that Modelo dethroned Bud Light from its spot as America’s most popular beer and led the downgrade of Anheuser-Busch stock.