The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2016–2022
A feminine-wash ad asked 'getting darker down there?' — not the brand's first offence
Fuyanjie's listing promised to 'wash out youthful pink,' playing on shame over normal pigmentation — echoing a 2016 slogan the brand was already criticised for.
Renhe Pharmaceutical (Fuyanjie) · 2022-05-17
What happened
Fuyanjie, a long-running Chinese feminine-hygiene brand made by Renhe Pharmaceutical, listed a hyaluronic-acid rose wash on Taobao with copy asking 'getting increasingly dark down there, what should I do?' and promising to 'wash out youthful pink.' Darkening in that area is ordinary pigmentation, not a flaw — the copy treated it as one to sell a fix for.
The listing spread online on 17 May 2022 and drew immediate criticism for shaming a normal bodily feature to sell a product. The brand pulled the listing and opened an internal review; its customer service then made things worse by blaming 'malicious marketing from certain bloggers' and claiming staff were being harassed, which read as deflection rather than accountability.
It was not a first offence. In 2016, Fuyanjie had printed 'I cannot wash away your past, but I can wash clean your future' on its packaging — read at the time as implying judgment about a woman's sexual history. Two campaigns, six years apart, built the same brand's ad copy around shaming the body part its own products claimed to care for.
Why it happened
- A feminine-care brand's ad copy treated normal pigmentation as a defect to fix, turning a health product into a shame-based pitch
- customer service response blamed bloggers and claimed harassment rather than owning the copy, extending the backlash into a second news cycle
- the same brand had run a comparably shaming slogan in 2016 — the 2022 ad was not an isolated lapse but a repeated pattern in how it wrote about women's bodies
The lesson
A body-care brand's copy is itself a claim about the customer's body — write it as a flaw to fix and the ad becomes the story, especially the second time the same brand has done it.
Aftermath
The listing was removed and Fuyanjie's official account said it took the matter seriously. Coverage noted the incident alongside a separate, unrelated Procter & Gamble ad investigation running the same week, drawing repeated comparisons to the brand's 2016 controversy.
Sources
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