1. The use of “gurl” The word ‘gurl’ was never cool. Fact. What’s made things worse is that because Lauryn Hill is black, the use of the alternative spelling of girl reinforces the stereotype that all American black girls just walk around screaming ‘guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurl’ all day.
2. There’s a “The” missing I didn’t notice this the first time around but ASOS have missed the ‘The’ in The Fugees. Now, you may think this is extremely petty, however fans always get angry when people get sloppy with names. Can you imagine if a newspaper spelt Justin Bieber’s name wrongly? The newspaper would fold and all the journalists would be forced to hide in caves in less than 24 hours.
3. The misspelling of Lauryn It wouldn't have hurt just to double check how she spells her name. It would have taken less than a second. 4. “G’wan” Now. Let’s sit down and dissect this one. What is g’wan? I don’t know. I know what 'gwarn' is, it means ‘go on’ in a super encouraging way. You’ll hear it a lot in London, mainly by people of Caribbean descent. I do wonder what ASOS were trying to achieve here. Their use of g’wan is stupid on three levels 1) Lauryn Hill is American, 2) It’s spelt so badly it sounds like something a Scouse would say, 3) It sounds like ASOS were trying desperately to be ‘down’ with ‘the ethnics’. It was a poor attempt, and stereotypical, which is the second worst thing a company can do (the first being racist, obviously).
File this under: Instagram fail.
