A Black Lives Matter activist and student of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who accused a fellow UVA student of trying to run over protesters, was hired by Dove.
Zyahna Bryant announced in a post on Instagram that she had partnered with Dove as a brand ambassador for a “Fat Liberation” campaign. Bryant made headlines after she pushed the university to expel fellow student Morgan Bettinger, claiming Bettinger referred to BLM protesters as “good speed bumps” in the summer of 2020 — only to later admit she may have “misheard” her, according to the New York post.
“My belief is that we should be centering the voices and experiences of the most marginalized people and communities at all times,” Bryant said in her video. “So, when I think about what fat liberation looks like to me, it looks like centering the voices and the experiences of those who live in and who maneuver through spaces and institutions in a fat body.”
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Bryant added in a comment on her video that “Fat Liberation is something we should all be talking about,” adding that was why she is partnering with Dove.
“The woman in this truck approached protesters in #Charlottesville, and told us that we would make ‘good speedbumps,'” Bryant wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2020.
Bettinger explained that on the night of July 17, 2020, she had been driving home and admitted she saw a dump truck blocking off the road ahead. However, the truck didn’t look like it was totally blocking the intersection of East High and 4th streets, so she kept driving.
At some point, Bettinger realized the road was blocked and had no room to turn around. She parked her car and ended up having a conversation with the dump truck driver in which the two had a “brief, casual conversation,” something that the driver later corroborated to police.
Bettinger allegedly said something to the driver along the lines of, “It’s a good thing that you are here, because otherwise these people would have been speed bumps.”
Over the course of the next year, Bettinger was investigated by UVA and the University Judiciary Committee (UJC). The UJC found her guilty of “threatening the health or safety” of other students.
Two other investigations found that the allegations against Bettinger could not be corroborated.
Bettinger, who graduated from UVA with a permanent mark on her records, filed a lawsuit against UVA for failing to protect her free speech rights and against racial discrimination.
IJR reached out to Dove and its parent company Unilever for a comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
