Communicative Negligence: Sunscreen Marketing, Skin-Tone Inclusivity, and Health Equity

This paper applies Framing Theory (Entman, 1993) to marketing claims across five major sunscreen brands, arguing that the dominant communicative frame, universalist, science-backed, and performance-oriented, may render the cosmetic acceptability needs of darker-skinned consumers invisible within language that purports to include them, within the brands and populations studied. Through analysis of 39 coded brand claims, an exploratory survey of 72 student-athletes, and interviews with ten Black student-athletes, this study finds that four of five mass-market brands examined employ unelaborated inclusivity claims that do not disclose formulation properties relevant to cosmetic acceptability across skin tones. It is important to note that skin tone and racial identity are distinct categories used in this paper to refer to different characteristics; findings about darker-toned survey respondents and findings about Black athletes reflect separate populations. Survey data provide a preliminary, non-significant observation that skin-tone compatibility may be a more salient cosmetic barrier for some darker-toned respondents, and athlete interviews corroborate patterns of product failure, representational exclusion in marketing, and persistent misinformation about melanin and UV risk. Drawing on the Health Belief Model and trust violation research, this paper introduces communicative negligence as a structural communicative pattern, not a legal finding, in which brands assert universal suitability without disclosing cosmetic acceptability information that may matter to consumers with diverse skin tones. Closing the sunscreen use gap may require not only reformulation but a change in communicative practice.