It looks like Forever 21 just made a huge mistake in marketing its Black Panther sweater on social media.
Forever 21 just recently posted a photo and link of its Wakanda Forever Fair Isle Sweater on Twitter today and social justice warriors have been busy tearing the retailer of fast fashion apart on the social media platform. While there's nothing really wrong with marketing a Black Panther sweater, except that the model that the company used for the campaign was a Caucasian male.
Check out a screenshot of the now-deleted tweet down here:
Netizens came rushing in slamming Forever 21's marketing decision, accusing the company of whitewashing. While it isn't necessarily wrong for Caucasians to enjoy and appreciate films like Black Panther and the merchandise that comes along with it, many feel like Forever 21 could have actually used a black model for the ad – after all, the company has featured black models many times before.
It didn't take the company ten minutes to delete the ad, but that was enough time for the internet to take screenshots of the image and spread it online.
Of course, this isn't the first time that Black Panther merchandise received backlash online. Disney was lambasted earlier this year because of Black Panther pins where Chadwick Boseman's T'challa had a lighter-skinned appearance than he actually does have in the film.
Black Panther which was released back in February broke a whole lot of ground, proving to Hollywood the filmgoers did want diversity and representation in the films they watched.
T'Challa is set to make his way back to the big screen in Avengers: Endgame which premieres on April 26, 2019.
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