Whitewash and Photoshop
Is anyone genuinely surprised by this recent L’Oreal Feria/Beyonce skin lightening advertising drama? I wasn’t. Not at all. This has happened to Beyonce before, after all. And I don’t get why so many people are blaming Beyonce — do celebrities get final approval on how they look in advertising? I’m inclined to think not, given everything I’ve read about stars getting upset about how their appearance was altered for print. Beyonce’s not a Photoshop pro who touches up her own pics. Just about every image you see in a magazine has been digitally retouched by a angel somewhere along the line.
Lighting is artfully manipulated to soften harsh lines or to brighten up skin tone. Colors are lightened or saturated to become more vibrant. Bodies are digitally altered to appear more svelte. Cosmetics advertisements are probably the worst offenders — the deception begins before the photographs are really taken. You didn’t believe that the eyelashes celebrities bat at the screen in just about any mascara ad on TV were real, did you? All fake, sad to say.
I guess I’m just jaded by the practice, and I don’t think it’s going to change. I see a photo like this Feria ad, where Bey is practically unrecognizable, and it makes me angry. Of course it does. But then my analytical side kicks in. Call me cynical, but I just see this as one of those cyclical beauty industry sins that only become controversial when it’s glaringly obvious. Respect to Jezebel and Racialicious for wading so deep into the issue, because sometimes I’m like — oh no, not again.
In order to effectively make a statement to the advertising industry that hey — Photoshopping in your skewed, ethnically exclusive perspective of beauty is not cool — consumers have to get to the point where they’re so angry that they boycott the brand, the magazines, everything. That never happens. A comment on that Racialicious thread summed it all up pretty well, IMO — Black Canseco, an industry insider who has a pretty cool blog of his own put the Photoshop whitewashing issue like this: “It’s simply part of the business; and the business does it because it sells; and it sells because the masses of folks prefer it/are comfortable with it/believe this is how it should be.
So now what?”
Exactly. Does this kind of thing make you outraged? Do you believe consumers have the power to alter industry-wide practices? I’d love to hear from you all on this issue. Now what, indeed?
Category: Famous Faces, Hair, Issues, Skin
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Sites That Link to this Post
- This Just In from AfroBella: L’Oreal WhiteWashes Beyonce « SisterSpeak Online Business Blog | August 8, 2008
- This Just In: L’Oreal WhiteWashes Beyonce (Surprised?) « SisterSpeak Online’s Beauty Suite | August 8, 2008
- Pop + Politics : Blog Archive : Cheap Thrills: Why is Beyonce So Pale? | August 8, 2008
- L’Oréal, Beyoncé And Cultural Cluéléssnéss at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture | August 12, 2008
- » SPOTTED: BEYONCE IN L.A. // 'CONCRETELOOP.COM' - quality not quantity | August 13, 2008
- Sugar Hype » Blog Archive » SPOTTED: BEYONCE IN L.A. | August 15, 2008
- Reality imitates satire | AMERIKA | June 19, 2009
- Beyoncé I am….Tour in Seoul « Kiss My Kimchi | December 18, 2009
As I am a relatively new reader of this blog I thought this post was interesting enough to aid me in a final paper on the effects of images in pop culture, so thanks Afrobella.
In addition to that I would just like to say that I just received my latest issue of Essence (which has the Obama fam on the cover) and this L’oreal ad is featured. Let me report that in this ad the photo is in the right tones for both B’s skintone and the hair color.
I’m not sure what happened with the photo that we have here. Perhaps this was one that was touched up too much or perhaps after the attention L’oreal decided that they should present B as she originally is. Who knows?
Also, there have been other celebs who have questioned the way that their photos have been presented in ads: Mary J Blige for a cover of Essence that she didn’t like (I think it was Essence), and Queen Latifah was upset that pounds were taken off her body in ads for the Chicago movie. But anyhoo…
Just wanted to say thanks again for giving me an image to work with =).
Oh yeah, you can check out the link below for a comparison of the photo from the ad in Essence and the one that has been circulating.
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/08/beyonce-loreal-ad.php
has anyone asked themselves why beyonce is getting paid to advertise hair when hers is not of the real variety?
I also noticed this as in the new issue of Essence, but I also noticed the House of Deréon ad a few pages away where Beyonce is almost the same color as she is in the L’Oreal ad. So you can’t get mad at L’Oreal for doing what everyone else is doing, you have to attack the industry as a whole.
Sure wish to heck they would have done that, lighten us up, for us with those darn school pictures!!!
I am really surprised to read SILLY coments which say “no, she is not trying to be white”…
WTF??? Are you blind? Or just too proud to admit it?
Then, it is just out of random that she appears with paler skin, paler eyes, and European-colored hair? That we NEVER see her with her natural black hair and black eyes? That she never wears blue or green wigs instead of those European colors?
OF COURSE, she’s ‘whitening’ herself!!! What she says matters not, what she DOES is the truth.
And many other Black celebs do the same. This is whitewashing, and the many who say that it’s her business must not have children. Or they don’t care if our society and silly beauty standards tells them that they are “too dark to be pretty”.
And this is spreading all over the world: in India, Japan, Brazil, one must look pale or ‘whiten’ himself/herself to be regarded as pretty (even if this is obviously a lie: non-white people with fake white feature ARE NOT beautiful, they look artificial). Some turn themselves in extra-terrestrials: look at Beyonce or Tyra Banks, they looks abnormal with these fake european colors. We are told they look better but this is quite the opposite. On the scarce pictures of them with black hair and eyes, they look definitly better.
Since beauty is what most people are after, putting a race criteria in it IS dangerous.
Some make stupid comparisions with make-up or clothes…but NO ONE is born with clothes of make-up, so all women begin with the very same basis. Or is one race in this world born with mascara??? x_x
Whereas this whitewashing tells us that our VERY RACE makes us pretty or not. According to what you were born with: too bad if you have dark skin, black hair and eyes…great, if you have something else, such as brown eyes (rather scarce, most are jet-black) and a paler complexion.
We’re told that we look ugly, and that the same will go for our children and grand children. Unless they accept to erase their racial features…
In doubt? Take a look at a VERY INTERESTING documentary, called “the modern racist paradigm”. You can find it on Google videos.
If some don’t mind being told that their race is ugly, fine: they are free to think so. But I cannot accept that. And more and more people like me are aware of this nonsense.
So thanks, Bella, for this post which might help some blind (or jealous?) people understand what is really at stakes here.
I must add one thing: I am white, and as you can see, I do not promote my own type of beauty. It is the opposite in fact: I would like every people on Earth to be accepted for their own breauty style, which cannot be the same for people of different origins and skin tone.