“He said that I didn’t look American enough to fit the part,” recalls Divya Sood.
March 19th, we are hosting a LadyDrinks event focused on diversity at the beauty counter. Our featured speakers are Former Miss America Nina Davuluri and Amanda Johnson, Co founder of Mented Cosmetics, a line of cosmetics for women of color.
We are asking ladies if there ever was a time that skin color or ethnicity affected their career. Divya Sood writes:
After I graduated undergraduate school at Rutgers as Valedictorian, I wanted to pursue advertising. I was told my English degree was not enough and I should take classes at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. I took classes in copywriting and advertising. I did well. When I was invited for job interviews, there were two instances I remember vividly. In the first, the phone interview went extremely well. When I arrived at the office, the gentleman who was to interview me just stared at me. He managed to speak after a few minutes and said that the only job he could possibly offer me was serving coffee to the advertising executives and running errands. Of course, I could move up. I agreed. He then said he would have to get back to me.
A month and a half of me chasing him, he always had an excuse as to why I wasn’t being hired just yet. Finally, he hired someone else for the position he said.
My second experience was with a company where I was eagerly invited for the interview the very next day. I went. When she looked at me, she kept staring and asked where I was from. Then she shuffled some papers and thanked me for coming in.
When I told my professor at SVA (who himself was in advertising) what had happened, he bluntly stated that advertising requires a look and I didn’t have it. He said that I didn’t look American enough to fit the part. He said clients wanted the all American advertising executives.
I don’t know if I just had bad experiences.
I gave up on pursuing advertising and copywriting at that point.
It was sad to me that my brownness was hindering me and yet it seemed perfectly acceptable.
I know now and I knew then that it wasn’t my skill that kept me from those jobs. I pursued copywriting as a freelancer and succeeded tremendously. I wrote novels and am publishing a third this June. I now teach English creative writing at Gotham Writers Workshop and Southern New Hampshire University. It was my brownness that kept me from pursuing a career in advertising. Looking back, I succeeded for myself in different ways, all related to writing and English. But wow, was the advertising world experience a huge awakening as to how much my brownness matters.”
