For a company that has been praised for diversity in race and body type, Dove has definitely taken a huge step back this week.

The company has claimed to represent the "the diversity of real beauty," but with their latest ad campaign, they just look racist. The GIF, meant to showcase their new body wash, features a black woman who removes her shirt to reveal a white woman, who then removes her shirt to reveal a third woman afterward.

Now, I see the message they were trying to make: "Our body wash is so good, you'll feel like a new person!" "Our cleanser is so fresh, your skin will be changed forever!"

Dove missed an extremely important detail in their ad. Intentionally or not, they send the message that the white woman is cleaner than the black woman. The black woman is 'cleaned,' and then magically becomes white.

Are we making something out of nothing? No, not really. In the soap industry, there is a huge history of using race to represent the quality of the soap.

I don't think this image requires an explanation. Pears Soap is suggesting that the darker skinned woman is dirty, and the power of the soap transforms her. This utterly racist connotation of 'black' meaning dirty is represented in Dove's ad.

It's pretty obvious that the company did not intend to make this claim, but that's kind of the problem. Dove is constantly releasing advertisements that feature a range of body types and skin tones, and claiming, proudly, to represent the true diversity of beauty, yet even they couldn't recognize this misrepresentation before the video was released.

Dove, a soap company, should be aware of the history and faults of their industry, and should also make a legitimate effort to uphold their self-titled status as leaders of the body confidence movement.