ARTICLE
19 January 2021

Chinese Ad For Make-Up Wipes Pulled Over Charges Of Sexism And Victim-Blaming

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Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz

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Frankfurt Kurnit provides high quality legal services to clients in many industries and disciplines worldwide. With leading practices in entertainment, advertising, IP, technology, litigation, corporate, estate planning, charitable organizations, professional responsibility and other areas — Frankfurt Kurnit helps clients face challenging legal issues and meet their goals with efficient solutions.
An online video promoting Purcotton make-up removal wipes in China was reportedly pulled by Winner Medical Group, after viewers accused the company of engaging in sexism and victim-blaming.
United States Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment

An online video promoting Purcotton make-up removal wipes in China was reportedly pulled by Winner Medical Group, after viewers accused the company of engaging in sexism and victim-blaming.  (The South China Morning Post  reported that the company received a "severe online whipping" from the public in response to the video.)

In the video, a woman is walking down the street alone at night when she realizes she is being followed by a masked man.  Afraid that she is about to be attacked, she pulls make-up removers out of her purse and quickly removes her makeup, which protects her from the attacker by (apparently) scaring him off.  (You can view the video here.) 

After being criticized online, the company tried to defend the commercial as a way to creatively advertise the "cleaning function of the product."  Soon afterwards, the company then apologized, saying, "We have allowed a video that did not follow our values to go online. We let you down and hurt your feelings. We deeply regret this and sincerely say 'We are sorry.  We were wrong,'"  The company further explained that it has, "set up a team to hold people to account for the problem and, in the meantime, we will improve content production and the review process to prevent similar incidents from happening again." 

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