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The promoters of the runway show said it was meant to honor African-American women during Black History Month.

St. Louis residents expressed outrage this week over a "Battle of the Complexions" contest scheduled for Friday night, but the event's promoters said they organized it to honor African-American women and regretted any "misunderstanding."

The event was set for 9 p.m. local time (10 p.m. ET) at a nightclub in St. Louis. Promotional materials, including the poster pictured at right, promised a contest to see which African-American women are most attractive — those with light skin, those with brown skin or those with dark skin.

"This is the most debatable topic of the year, whats the sexiest skin complexion?? So ladies come out & lets settle this!!" the promoters — Mack TV, a video and music promotional company, and a local "men's entertainment" promoter calling himself Nelly Da'Celeb — said on a Facebook page for the event, which msnbc.com is not linking to because of extreme language.

Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis chapter of the NAACP, said the event "raises the ... hair on the back of people's necks like me and some other folks."

"Folks who buy into it, support it, feed into it, they're just assuring that using race — using the skin complexion of women, devaluating women and things of this nature — is going to continue to happen, because as long as people spend money to take advantage of it, somebody's going to use it as a promotional tool," Pruitt told NBC station KSDK.

After the contest was highlighted this week by Kevin C. Johnson, a music writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, negative reaction was swift and loud.

Camille Houston, an African-American woman from St. Louis, told KSDK that she found the promotion offensive because it perpetuates historical divisions in the African-American community centered on skin tone.

"Some guys will say, 'I don't like talking to dark-skinned girls,' or, you know, some girls will say. 'I don't like talking to dark-skinned guys,'" Houston said.

The comments section on Johnson's post was filled with remarks reflecting equal parts outrage and sadness, interspersed with some support from commenters whose pictures indicated they were African-American, along with some outright racist sentiments.

"Not only does this kind of nonsense continue to promote a negative collective self image, (which society does fine all by itself). These clowns now promote it. Wow!!!" one said.

"The women, the men, and the promoters of this event are only doing much more to create a larger divide by skin color in an already too divided country," said another, who added: "All involved are losers in my book."

In a post Thursday on Nelly Da'Celeb's personal Facebook page, Mack TV and Nelly Da'Celeb said they understood why some people were upset but that the event would go on:

MACK TV WOULD LIKE TO CLEAR UP THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF OUR CONCEPT FOR THIS PARTY...ITS NOT TO DEGRADE WOMEN OR DIVIDE SKIN COLORS. ITS SIMPLY TO SEE WHICH COMPLEXION OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN RACE REPRESENTS THE MOST (lightskinned, caramel-brown, or darkskinned) AS A WHOLE , MALE & FEMALE! I CAN SEE THE MISUNDERSTANDING WITH OUR PROMO.....WE COULD HAVE USED A BETTER CHOICE OF WORDS....WE DID NOT MEAN TO OFFEND THE OFFENDED

ITS BLACK HISTORY MONTH , SO WE MADE A PARTY THEME DEDICATED TO OUR AFRICAN AMERICAN CROWD. THE YOUNGER GENERATION IS LOVING THIS PARTY BECAUSE HERE'S THE FIRST TIME EVER YOU CAN COME OUT & BE PROUD THAT YOU ARE BLACK!! REGARDLESS OF YOUR SKIN TONE SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION & MISLEADING INFO.

ITS BLACK HISTORY MONTH , SO LETS BE PROUD OF THE SKIN WE'RE IN!! REPRESENT YOUR COMPLEXION!

They added that "ladies" would be admitted at a discount of "$5 until 11 p.m."

Mike Rush of NBC station KSDK contributed to this report by M. Alex Johnson of msnbc.com.

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KSDK-TV

Treating scrap meat with ammonium hydroxide creates a pink goo that is used to extend meat products like chicken and beef and to kill bacteria.

McDonald's confirmed that it has eliminated the use of ammonium hydroxide — an ingredient in fertilizers, household cleaners and some roll-your-own explosives —  in its hamburger meat.

The company denied that its decision was influenced by a months-long campaign by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to get ammonium-hydroxide-treated meats like chicken and beef out of the U.S. food supply. But it acknowledged this week that it had stopped using the unappetizing pink goo — made from treating otherwise inedible scrap meat with the chemical — several months ago.

Besides being used as a household cleaner and in fertilizers, the compound releases flammable vapors, and with the addition of certain acids, it can be turned into ammonium nitrate, a common component in homemade bombs. It's also widely used in the food industry as an anti-microbial agent in meats and as a leavener in bread and cake products. It's regulated by the U.S. Agriculture Department, which classifies it as "generally recognized as safe."

McDonald's decision was first reported this week by the Daily Mail, a blaring British tabloid, which trumpeted it as a victory for fellow Brit Oliver against the monolithic U.S. food industry. 

Oliver's campaign began in April, when he included a segment on what he called "pink slime" on his TV show, "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" (warning: some readers may find this video distasteful):

The use of treated scrap meat "to me as a chef and a food lover is shocking," Oliver said. "... Basically we're taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it 'fit' for humans."

Todd Bacon, McDonald's senior supply chain officer, told the Daily Mail that the decision "was not related to any particular event, but rather to support our effort to align our global beef raw material standards." 

In a statement, McDonald's clarified that it stopped using "select lean beef trimmings" — its preferred term for scrap meat soaked in ammonium hydroxide and ground into a pink meatlike paste — at the beginning of last year.

"This product has been out of our supply chain since August of last year," it said.

Sarah Prochaska, a registered dietitian at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, said that ammonium hydroxide is widely used in the U.S. food industry but that consumers may not be able to know what products include it because the USDA considers it a component in a production procedure — separating scrap meat — and not an ingredient that must be listed on food labels.

"It's a process, from what I understand, called 'mechanically separated meat' or 'meat product,'" Prochaska told NBC station KSDK of St. Louis.

While the government considers it safe, it certainly "does not look anything like ground beef," she said. And since it's not on nutrition labels, the only way to avoid it "would be to choose fresher products, cook your meat at home, cook more meals at home," she said.

NBC station KSDK of St. Louis contributed to this report.

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