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There are 4 covers for Elle magazine coming out. All 4 feature young starlets. All four are airbrushed, relit, all four girls look better than their usual day-to-day look. One girl is the girl from the movie Precious Gabourey Sidibe. A huge controversy has sparked because she appears lighter skinned, in the bright lighted photograph. But it doesn't stop there a lot of people are angry that they even removed a single, tiny imperfction from her photo at all.
My take on this is that as usual, NOBODIES BOTHERED to asked Gabourey about HER feelings about this, it's ALL about their feelings on the matter. It seems they assume she is the girl in the movie, so they know her. I'm going to go out here on a limb and say SHE IS A NORMAL KID, and normal young girls want to look their best in photos! But shockingly many people assume Elle had some evil motive in the photo. That Gabourey is now public property and must be shown in her worst light at all times while PCilly called beautiful, for HER OWN GOOD.
People will make an issue of everything and nothing.
Photos for magazines are retouched and lighting will slightly alter the shades in a Black person's skin. I mean they didn't change her from chocolate to caramel. I don't get all of the fuss.
Well just goes to show that those people are not photographers. When you try to photograph dark skin like hers you really have to blast a lot of light on her face. You are not seeing light skin, just light bouncing off really dark skin. If they did not do that she would just look like a dark shadow and her features would be lost. I would of done it with all AM sunlight though. They look liked they used a lot of digital amp up or just white studio lights.
Just recently I saw a small block regarding a Paris Hilton story. It was on the main page of a website, it had a small snippet, her recent jail photo, and another picture of her and her boyfriend all mashed up.
Once you click on the story and see that actual jail photo you can see she is way lighter and that they had made her skin more golden or tan for the photo displayed on the main page. There was a huge difference too, the photo displayed on the main page looked as if was taken under better conditions, yet no one will complain about that?
The problem here is that whenever it is a photo shoot of someone with unconventional beauty it is as if they alone must display all their flaws.
I do not understand the different standards other than to write it off on those who might choose to not make an effort toward conventional beauty standards themselves. Not that there is anything wrong with that, especially if they feel good about themselves, but there is something a bit wrong if they begin complaining regarding what a publication that has traditionally devoted toward conventional beauty standards.
It is not like all those complaining are loyal readers to Elle, so Elle should not care.
The fact though that the movie itself displays those African-Americans with lighter skin as being more affluent, they even used a back light to make one character always appear more glowing (aka lighter), from what I read about the movie, so why is no one complaining about the movie as well? Is it because blacks do come in all different shades? Is it because the movie was attempting to accurately portray some portion of reality or even a stereotype? If all that is true then why not realize fashion magazines edit all their covers, with all their models, and this is just business as usual.
I see this as more an attack on the fashion industry itself by those who detest it rather than any actual concerns.
Photographers' flashes can turn black clothes see-through. We see evidence of this in every Whoops! column in fashion mags. They use bright bulbs. That's why Sidibe looks that color: she's under bright light.
Of course they adjusted the lighting, windowing, and contrast for the picture. Do people really need to debate this? Certainly you would not want a very dark photo with no visible features on the cover of the magazine. If some deathly pale celeb is on a cover, they are going to darken it too. You don't want a featureless, white blob on the cover either.
I suspect if Elle did feature a picture of Sidibe looking very dark, someone would have held up another pic where her skin appears lighter and accused Elle of trying to make her look extra black.
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