L’Oreal advertisement from the August 2008 edition of Elle Magazine.
Cosmetics company L’Oreal is currently under fire for lightening Beyonce’s skin color in one of their recent advertisements. (Compare the image above with the image on the right.) The hair color can be explained away as it is an ad featuring one of their Feria hair coloring products, but there is no explanation as to why Beyonce’s skin tone would have been lightened to this extent. L’Oreal denies doing any Shopping, and released a statement that says: “We highly value our relationship with Ms. Knowles. It is categorically untrue that L’Oreal Paris altered Ms. Knowles’s features or skin tone in the campaign for Feria hair color.” (Beyonce, a spokeswoman for L’Oreal since 2001, is also posting the same statement on the “news” section of her website.)
Despite the denials, it is pretty obvious that extensive Shopping was done to this image – even Beyonce’s eye color is lighter. Without seeing the original image, however, we can never know for sure.
What do you think? Do you think this was a blatant Shop job or do you believe what both L’Oreal and Beyonce are saying?
UPDATE: Jezebel is now saying that this same ad appears darker in Essence Magazine…
The Beyonce L’Oreal ad as it appears in 2 different magazines – Essence on left, Elle on right. [Image comparison from Young, Black & Fabulous]
There are a few possible theories for this – the presses at Essence might have been a little more generous with their ink coverage, the presses at Elle might have been a little light with their ink coverage (that would be my guess) or L’Oreal intentionally color balanced the ad darker and lighter for each magazine. The Essence ad actually looks much better color balanced overall (the Elle ad is very washed out looking), so perhaps something was just off in the Elle printing presses. There’s also some good theories over at Racialicious.
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Of course it was shopped! Remember when we saw her in NYC? She is not that fair. And, to me, something looks strange about the right side of her face – where the hair meets her skin. Someone has been using the dodge tool on Beyonce, methinks.