Jerks Deface GAP Ad Featuring Sikh Model, GAP Responds Awesomely

You guys know about Gap’s “Make Love” campaign, featuring a
diverse group of models from Lisa Ling to Cyndi Lauper, right? I’ve been in
love with these ads ever since a friend Snapchatted the version with Sikh actor
Waris Ahluwalia, who was in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and designs beautiful jewelry.

Well, now some asshole has tried to reduce Ahluwalia to some tired stereotypes by defacing his ad with the phrases “Make Bombs” and “Please Stop Driving Taxis.”

After seeing the defaced ad on the New York subway, Islamic Monthly senior editor Arsalan Iftikhar tweeted the
picture to his 40,000 followers, as shown below:

The photo has since then received a reply from Gap, who asked for the defaced ad’s exact location (no word yet about what they’ll do if they find/have found the ad). The company then changed its twitter cover photo to an unblemished still of Ahluwalia and the female model featured alongside him, as shown at the beginning of this post.

As far as infuriating stories of racism goes, this one at least has a heartwarming outcome. Gap’s response was quick and in line with the values that its “Make Love” campaign promotes (along with shilling its own products of course). In addition, the company deserves props for even featuring a diverse group of people in this campaign, when a ton of people doing their holiday shopping will see them.

It’s depressing, though, that incidents like this continue to occur with regularity in 2013, but hopefully Iftikhar and Gap have made some would-be subway racists rethink their biases.