By Kevin McCauley
Naomi Campbell is threatening legal action against Kraft’s Cadbury unit after it ran an ad in the U.K. that compared the 41-year-old supermodel to a chocolate bar.
The company has apologized and pulled the ad.
The offending piece showed a Cadbury Dairy Milk Bliss bar sitting on a bunch of diamonds with the tagline, “Move over Naomi, there’s a new diva in town.”
Campbell rapped that the piece as insulting and hurtful: “It’s upsetting to be described as a chocolate, not just for me, but for all black women and black people as a race.”
She received support from the non-profit Operation Black Vote, which knocked the ad as offensive to black women. “Racism in the playground starts with white children calling black children ‘chocolate bar,'" said a statement from OBV head Simon Woolley. "At best this is insensitive and at worst Cadbury’s utter disregard for a community's feelings. Their white euro-centric joke is not funny to black people."
Campbell’s mother, Valerie Morris, told the Independent the ad is shameful and informed Cadbury that this is “the 21st century, not the 1950s.”
Cadbury, in its statement, said: "It was certainly never our intention to cause any offense, and the campaign itself is a light-hearted take on the social pretensions of Cadbury Dairy Milk Bliss."
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