In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Pears’ Soap advertisements promoted more than just personal hygiene. They sent strong messages about race, colonialism, and morality. One of the brand’s most notorious ads shows a white child washing a black child with Pears soap. It includes the captions “Matchless for the Complexion” and “For Improving the Complexion”. The images imply that washing makes the Black child’s skin appear lighter. This promotes the notion that cleanliness, and therefore moral and cultural worth, was linked to 
whiteness. Produced during British imperialism peak, this ad presented soap not just as a product, but as a tool for civilizing. It reinforced colonial and racial hierarchies. Using Roland Barthes’ framework of rhetoric and signs, this essay will examine the visual and textual elements in this Pears’ Soap advertisement. Through close reading, I will show how the ads used visual messages and racial coding to influence its audience and normalize white supremacy. I will also discuss how today’s viewers are more likely to see it as racist and offensive propaganda.

Roland Barthes’ “Rhetoric of the Image” explains how advertising communicates on different levels through signs. These signs fall into three types of messages: the linguistic message, the non-coded iconic message, and the coded iconic message. Together, these layers work to embed ideology—in this case, the racist and imperial ideology of the British Empire—within the visual language of consumer advertising. The two Pears’ Soap ads—one titled “Matchless for the Complexion” and the other “For Improving the Complexion”—are strong examples of this. They carry messages about racial superiority and colonialism within a seemingly harmless context: a soap ad.

The linguistic message in both ads explicitly links soap with skin and beauty. Phrases like “Matchless for the Complexion” and “For Improving the Complexion” serve as guiding texts, leading the viewer toward a specific interpretation of the image. The term “complexion” becomes a substitute for whiteness, and “improvement” suggests that Blackness is a flaw needing correction. These textual signifiers seem gentle and clinical, disguising the harsh implications of racial erasure with language about personal care.

The non-coded iconic message in both ads seems straightforward: a child is bathed or shown soap. In the “Matchless for the Complexion” ad, a white child stands next to a Black child in a washtub. The Black child’s skin appears split between dark and light, suggesting that the soap has physically altered their skin tone. The same idea is echoed in the second image: a white child holds a mirror for a Black child who will soon appear “cleaner”—that is, whiter—from using Pears’ Soap. These visuals depict bathing, skin, and child interaction. However, their innocence only exists on the surface.

The coded iconic message, or connotation, uncovers the ad’s true ideological role. According to Barthes, these images create a worldview where whiteness equates to cleanliness, beauty, and progress, while Blackness links to dirt, chaos, or deficiency. Using soap as the changing agent connects consumerism to colonialism: the ad frames soap not just as a product but as a tool for civilization. The white child plays a benevolent role, often tied to the British Empire’s “civilizing mission.” The Black child, passive and cheerful, is literally being “whitewashed”—a metaphor for fitting into the dominant (white) culture. The advertisement thus creates a myth (in Barthes’ sense) that the British Empire’s racial hierarchy is natural and kind, enforced not by violence but through everyday domestic rituals.

This Pears’ Soap advertisement shows a Black mother trying to bathe her child outside a small wooden house. The child is squirming and pulling on her headscarf, making her expression look strained rather than happy. Nearby, three other children watch from around the corner. A sign for Pears’ Soap with an image of a white child is posted on the wall, and the handwritten caption says, “Oh golly! She’s gwine to make dat n***** white.” The ad uses racist language and stereotypes, not only through the slur but also by writing “gwine” instead of “going” and “dat” instead of “that.” These spelling choices are not accidental—they were commonly used in racist portrayals to mock Black speech and present Black people as uneducated or inferior. The ad suggests that washing with Pears’ Soap can make Black skin white, sending the harmful message that whiteness is cleaner, better, and more desirable. It tries to make this idea seem normal and even funny, but it’s actually spreading dangerous and dehumanizing beliefs. Today, most people would see this ad as extremely offensive because it promotes racism and reinforces the idea that white skin is the only standard of beauty or worth.

In closing, Pears more than simply old-fashioned product advertising, soap ads—especially Matchless for the Complexion and the image of the Black mother washing her child—are statements. These are strong cultural texts that use images and language to convey profoundly racist ideas. These advertisements encouraged the idea that whiteness represented decency, beauty, and moral dominance both visually and through the written words. Blackness was portrayed as unclean, untamed, or in need of rectification rather. Understanding how these meanings are made and made to appear natural comes from Roland Barthes’ Rhetoric of the Image. By dividing the advertisement into its linguistic message, non-coded iconic message (what is truly seen), and coded iconic message (what is implicitly meant), Barthes illustrates how advertisements create myths that support dominant ideas, especially white supremacy and colonial influence.

Ferdinand de Saussure’s foundational ideas in semiotics help us further understand how these meanings are built. Saussure argued that meaning is created through the relationship between the signifier (the physical form, like an image or word) and the signified (the idea or concept it represents). In the Pears’ Soap ads, the image of the soap, the white child, or the act of bathing are signifiers—but they don’t just signify cleanliness.

Barthes theory helps us to remember that advertising often sells ideas and beliefs, generally without the viewer even noticing it, rather than only selling goods. In these Pears Soap advertising turns soap into more than just cleanliness, but also racial change where whiteness is the last objective. The ads aim to make this message natural, funny, even ethical—thereby concealing the brutality of the concepts under a basic home scene. Though we can now clearly see how offensive and hurtful these communications are, examining them from Barthes’ perspective helps us to grasp how such ideas were once generally embraced. These commercials demonstrate how effectively pictures may influence public opinion and why it’s crucial to read the media we consume critically, both historic and contemporary.

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