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The furore over Beyoncé Knowles, recently unveiled in an ad for L'Oréal looking far whiter than a pop star with an African-American father and a Creole mother ought, perhaps, to look, has prompted allegations that the cosmetics giant artificially lightened her skin - a fact strenuously denied by L'Oréal. Are L'Oréal fans being cheated, or are Beyoncé fans being naive? For surely you would have to be an idiot not to realise that in advertising, nothing is ever as it seems. It never was, and in an age of ever-more sophisticated digital trickery, it never will be.
Call me an idiot, then. Like millions of women, I allow myself to be fooled every day. Note the phrase "allow myself ", for this is key to the evil science of advertising. I know the hair in that shampoo ad isn't real - no human hair could be that shiny - but still I fool myself that if I buy said shampoo, my hair will be that shiny, too.
My whole bathroom is a triumph of hope over common sense, because I am a typical woman. From the cradle to the grave, we seem hard-wired to strive for human perfection in a way that men simply are not. The beauty industry knows this, and exploits this bleak sense of our own shortcomings in the timehonoured way: by using the world's most beautiful women - celebrities and models - to sell us things.
But something sinister has happened in the past decade. Even the world's most beautiful women just aren't deemed beautiful enough for the job. So warped is our sense of perfection that every magazine cover, every film poster and every cosmetics ad doesn't see the light of day until an army of retouchers has enhanced each image until it is utterly flawless. And so Keira Knightley's chest gets enlarged, Kate Winslet's thighs get slimmed down, and Beyoncé, allegedly, gets lightened.
As someone who has interviewed Beyoncé, I can say that in the flesh, her natural skin colour is so gorgeous that only a fool - or a racist - would purposely make it lighter.
If the Beyoncé allegations are true, then it is a far more heinous act than the enlarging of Keira's chest or the airbrushing of Eva Longoria's frown lines. You can count on one hand the number of black and mixed-race models who have secured lucrative beauty contracts: to lighten the skin of any of them is appalling.
Employing a black woman and painting her white is the worst kind of racism: a box-ticking exercise that makes a dire situation worse. Who says black isn't beautiful? Not the consumer, but an industry that should surely reflect all types of beauty, yet instead, seems increasingly rotten to the very core.
Reader views (1)
It's really sad this is happening. I thought that the fight for black beauty had gained some ground only to be disappointed by what is happening now. Why make a black woman lighter? Why insist on long blond hair for a black woman? I blame society and even the said celebrities for agreeing to such damaging things. Why should Tyra and Beyonce wear fake blond hair what's wrong with well maintained Afro hair? What message are they sending out to young girls who consider them role models?
- Ciku, Nairobi, Kenya., 23/09/2009 12:50
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