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“Thanksgiving means turkey dinners, family reunions… and spray-tanning?
Club Sun Tanning Salons’ attempt to make Thanksgiving into a holiday of tanning has gone totally awry with a promotional campaign with the unfortunate slogan: “The Indians brought more than just ‘CORN’ to the first Thanksgiving… they brought SEXY ‘COLOR’!”
In case you miss the point, they’ve got a model dressed up as a Native American, and a slightly paler model dressed up as a prim pilgrim next to her. You can see it all on their Facebook page.
As we’ve seen time and time again, having non-Native American woman dress up as “Indians” in fake fringes, beads and feathers is pretty much always racist and ill-advised, not to mention tacky. Stereotyping Native Americans’ skin color, too? Also highly not recommended.“
– Huffington Post, Tanning Salon Promotes ‘Indian Color’ In Misguided Thanksgiving Promo.
“In honor of Thanksgiving, a chain of tanning salons in Alabama and Florida has launched a holiday-themed ad campaign that is both offensively stupid and stupidly offensive. “The Indians brought more than just ‘CORN’ to the first Thanksgiving,” reads the copy, “they brought SEXY ‘COLOR’!” Ugh, the unnecessary quotation marks. Ugh, the insensitivity. Ugh, the idea of indoor tanning. I feel like I’m getting brain cancer.
Club Sun Color Studios offers women who have never heard about how artificial tanning ages your skin and makes you look like an underbasted turkey carcass by the time you’re 30 the opportunity for big, big savings this Thanksgiving with this super rad promotion. In addition to both savings and melanoma and that weird cooked skin smell that emanates from tanning salons, the promotion is advertised by a sexy blonde pilgrim and a woman in a Sexy Indian Halloween costume-style getup brought together by the magic of bad photo editing and really, really idiotic cultural appropriation.”
– Jezebel, Tanning Salon Is Super Thankful Native Americans ‘Brought Sexy Color’.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #45 – No Sun.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
Creative Commons License
This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
