Clicks

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Clicks Pharmacy

Clicks, a leading South African beauty and pharmaceutical retailer. It is belong to New Clicks group which was founded in Cape Town by Jack Goldin in 1968 and now operates over 670 retail outlets in southern Africa. In 2003, its stock was listed on the JSE Securities Exchange South Africa.[1]

TRESemmé hair products advert by Clicks

A hair product advert by retailer Clicks.

Clicks published an advert to promote haircare products featuring two images of Black women’s hair, and two images of white women’s hair. Captions for the Black women strands were “dry and damaged” and ‘frizzy and dull’, while the white women’s hair images were captioned ‘normal’ and “fine and flat”.[2]

Controversy

In September 2020, Clicks faced criticism after a TRESemmé advertisement posted on its website, showing dry and damaged black hair and fine white hair, was described as racist.

Critics found the advert particularly insensitive because of the historic issues around African hair in South Africa. Under white-minority rule, the state used the so-called "pencil test" to decide who was black or mixed-race - depending on how easily the pencil moved through the hair. Many Clicks stores were forced to close on Monday following protests led by opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who called the hair advert "racist" and "dehumanising".[3]

"The implications of this are that black identity exists as inferior to the identity of white people. It is an assertion that white standards of beauty are to be aspired to and features of black represent damage, decay and abnormality," the EFF said in a statement.[4]

As a result of protests over this advert, some of South Africa's biggest retailers will no longer sell TRESemmé hair products and senior executive at Clicks resigned and a number of employees were suspended.

South African cabinet also made this advert as concern as they noted, "Black hair has been the subject of intense politicisation and a source of unjust discrimination in out recent history. Out nation's history is littered with laws and societal norms that ewuated 'blackness' and the associated physical traits - for example, dark skin, kinky and curly hair - to a badge of inferiority."[5]

Clarification

Clicks later removed the images and posted an apology, but anger continues to swell over the advert and the #ClicksMustFall is also trending on social media at that time.[6]

EFF, Clicks and TRESemmé's parent company Unilever conduct a meeting on September 10, 2020 to discussed the controversial advert and as a result Unilever would remove all TRESemmé products from South African stores for a period of 10 days and donate at least 10,000 sanitary pads to informal settlements in the country. Chief executive of Clicks, Vikesh Ramsunder, also apologised, adding that an audit of all promotional material would be "urgently implemented" as well as diversity and inclusivity training.[7]

References

  1. New Clicks Holdings Limited. Retrieved in December 29, 2020.
  2. Young, Norma (2020). An offensive haircare advert shows Black South Africans still have to fight apartheid’s race battles. Retrieved on December 29, 2020.
  3. BBC (2020). TRESemmé: South African shops pull products after 'racist' hair adverts. Retrieved on December 29, 2020.
  4. BBC (2020). South Africa's Clicks beauty stores raided after 'racist' hair advert. Retrieved on December 29, 2020.
  5. Maphanga, Canny (2020). Clicks hair ad 'profoundly offensive and racist', says Cabinet. Retrieved on December 29, 2020.
  6. Makhubele, Wisani (2020). Anger over Clicks advert rages on despite apology. Retrieved on December 29, 2020.
  7. BBC (2020). TRESemmé: South African shops pull products after 'racist' hair adverts. Retrieved on December 29, 2020.