Let's Play A Game Called "Why Did GAP Kids Pull And Apologize For This Ad?"

Ok, time to play the game. The rules are simple- try to figure out what people were so outraged about in the above picture that GAP actually pulled the ad and apologized for it. I sat and stared at it for 10-15 minutes and couldn’t figure it out. I even turned my computer upside down to read the one girl’s shirt. Nothing. This one absolutely stumped me. Well, ready for the answer? Hold onto your socks!

Adland - The taller girl is white, and the shorter girl is black, and now the ad has touched a nerve.

The usual suspects of activists turned journalists kicked up a fuss on Twitter, and soon there were long articles everywhere from HuffPo to BBC. 

Soon enough The Gap apologized for the ad, but as an author at SheKnows says She’s not buying it, and she will still boycott Gap. As a white mother raising a white child to be the best anti-racist ally she can be, it’s important to me to only support companies that value-positive messaging in their advertising. And while on the surface this GapKids ad seems to fit the bill, look a little closer, and it fails. Because I don’t want to support a company that only portrays positive images of white children. If there aren’t also positive portrayals of children of color, I want nothing to do with it.

Did you get it right? No? Then I guess you’re a racist. This ad is racist because the black girl is shorter than the white girls. GAP Kids actually pulled the ad because some people decided to say it’s racist. Never in a million years would I have been able to figure that out. And I love this woman not accepting GAP’s apology. Well to be honest, I wouldn’t either if I were her, because there’s no chance in fucking Hell GAP thinks they did anything wrong. Mainly because they didn’t. This has topped the list as my favorite faux-outrage of all time. It has topped Clorox tweet that people took as meaning we should bleach all the black people emojis

The best part of the whole thing is last year’s ad, the black girl was the tallest.

It’s almost as if they never in a million years thought someone would make a big deal out of the heights of the children in their ads. Keep on keeping on, outrage people. Doing god’s work.