L’Oreal made headlines by announcing that a hijab-wearing model and beauty blogger would be one of the faces for their newest product, however the move has been criticized due to the model’s prior anti-Israel tweets.
Amena Khan announced on Instagram that she would be a part of L’Oreal Paris UK’s Elvive World of Care Campaign:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd7WvmhHb4r/?taken-by=amenaofficial
Khan told Vogue UK, “How many brands are doing things like this? Not many. They’re literally putting a girl in a headscarf—whose hair you can’t see—in a hair campaign. Because what they’re really valuing through the campaign is the voices that we have.”
L’Oreal Paris UK’s general manager, Adrien Koskas, said, “L’Oréal Paris UK are both proud and excited to be launching such a unique and disruptive campaign for the haircare market, a category which in previous years has been perceived as the cliché of beauty advertising.”
Media outlets like Glamour and the Huffington Post were ecstatic about the move and gushed over the fact that Khan was going to be the first hijab-wearing female Muslim to be a featured in a major hair product advertisement. However, others took notice of Khan’s hyperbolic criticisms of Israel on Twitter, which included:
·Calling Israel “an illegal state” and “a sinister state” that harms “innocent children.”
·Tweeting that “Israel = Pharaoh” because “both are child murderers.”
·Writing that “the brutal murder of Palestinians had been occurring MANY years before the formation of Hamas. Israel’s excuses are blatant lies.”
·Claiming that Israel couldn’t be acting in self-defense against the Palestinians because they would only be “defending itself against unarmed babies and civilians.”
Khan has since deleted those tweets.
Interestingly, there were claims from the early 2000’s claimed that L’Oreal’s founder was “an anti-Semitic fascist” and that the company profited off of land that was confiscated from Jews during the Holocaust. In 2012, Jean Victor-Meyers, whose grandfather was a rabbi murdered in Auschwitz took over the company; in 2014, L’Oreal faced a boycott for sending a care package of Garnier products to Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers during the Israel-Hamas conflict.
