A Whitewash

L'Oreal, the worlds largest cosmetics maker have come under fire for their new ad showcasing Beyoncé Knowles-Carter in a different light.  The ad for highlights has B sporting strawberry blonde locks and almost-white skin.

This has outraged a number of people saying that this is taking the 'anything-for-a-good-shot' argument too far.

A few weeks ago now I watched a show that followed ex-Misteeq member Alesha Dixon as she embarked on the mission to get a mag/publication to feature a shoot of her with no retouching at all. She got a lot of air pie. In the end a mag agreed to do it and the results were fine. But it was the research that she undertook on the way that really grabbed my attention. There was this one bit of the show where she goes to her god-daughters play school and asks the little girls questions about what they think is beautiful, who do they think are beautiful etc. When she asked what features did they not like about themselves, a little caucasian girl answered, "my teeth, I think they are not white enough and I would like to get them whitened." Another mixed race girl said that she didn't like the colour of her skin, she didn't like being brown. Oh by the way did I mention that these were children who could have been no more than 6 years old at the time, 8 years at the very very most.

When I happened upon Janelle Monâe (get to know if you don't already...but for those of you who are too lazy to google, I'll be doing a piece on her soon) I begun doing my research on her to try and get a sense of the kind of person she is, what influences her and so on. On her myspace at the time (this was eons ago) she had a video posted up where she reenacted an experiment done a few decades before. Unfortunately I do not remember the person who first carried this test or the date but I'll look into for you, just had to get this post out! In this test, black children both boys and girls sat with 1 one black doll and 1 white doll in front of them. Both dolls were exactly the same; no hair, no clothes, same size only their colour was different. The children were asked which one did they prefer and all of them, the boys and the girls chose the white doll. One girl who chose the white doll was then asked which doll did she think looked more like her and picked up the brown doll but then when asked again which did she like better she picked up the white one. This really broke my heart.

I'm a dark skinned female and faced a lot of bullying because of it. What really hurt the most was the fact that it was not just the other races but the people of whose race I am a part of shunning me. Among blacks there's this unspoken hierarchy of colour that stems from slavery where the lighter you were i.e. of mixed heritage, with blue, green, hazel eyes etc gave you a better chance for survival as you could then pass as white. There's a great book I read that deals with this but the name and author escapes me. In fact the author of that book is of Creole descent. The Creole population of America are mainly descendants of white French settlers in Louisiana. Miss Beyoncé is also of Creole descent. Her mother, Tina from Louisiana is Creole and is a very light skinned woman and Beyoncé has definitely taken her mothers genes. Why would they have to make her lighter?

I remember another show (from this post it would seem all I do is watch shows to do with this!) I think it was the rise and rise of Beyoncé on MTV. Solange was saying that Beyoncé used to get bullied because she was light skin with sandy blonde hair. It made me think at the time that you really can't please everyone; i'd been picked on for being too dark, she was picked on for being too light.

In response to the new ad the chairman of the media-monitoring committee of the National Association of Black Journalists argues that "magazines have to be sensitive to perceptions that light-skinned African Americans are more acceptable." This is a very sad perception and does nothing to help the development of black people as a whole instead it divides us even more just like it did in slavery with those who were allowed to work in the house and the others that were darker stayed in the field.

On looking at the ad myself (picture below, one on left is new L'Oreal shot), she does look lighter. L'Oréal categorically denies altering her features or the tone of her skin. I don't know. What do you think? Perhaps after looking and just before you make up your mind have a look at her music video for ring the alarm. Watch the bit where she is sitting sans make-up with tears in her eyes. This is why I'm not sure if she's being made to look lighter or darker...

Be YOU xx