I received this email today and felt it was something important to share with you and hope you will take a moment to read it and if you feel so inclined...fill in the petition located in the right hand column on my blog......
It looks like Elle had quite the white Christmas.
Bollywood actor and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is featured on the cover of Elle Magazine looking far paler than she is in real life. Most fans are up in arms and an appalled Ms. Bachchan is considering a lawsuit against the magazine.
Consumers have long been inundated with ads that use prominent Bollywood actors to promote skin-lightening products. In a country that produces gorgeous women of color, it is sad that Ms. Rai-Bachchan, who is relatively light-skinned, is one of the very few with some cross-over appeal. To see magazines like Elle further enforce the color hierarchy of crossover appeal by making Aishwarya appear lighter-skinned is a slap in the face.
This is the second racial debacle surrounding Elle. The American version was criticized for its October 2010 issue, which featured actress Gabourey Sidibeon on one of its four celebrity covers with noticeably lighter skin than her natural complexion.
Lets tell Elle Magazine to make a commitment to moving away from using white as a standard for beauty, and demand a public statement and apology.
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1 comments:
I'm not surprised. I stopped my 2 decade-long subscription to ELLE when they continuously started using "stars" as cover models and when it became less about the clothing and articles and more about the ads and the famous people. It's a shame, too, given that ELLE has had several spectacular-looking African-American, Hispanic and African models grace their covers; Sudanese model Alek Wek is about as dark as you can get and she was on their cover. However, editors have changed in the last couple of years and its entirely possible that the decision to "lighten" darker women occurred when Robbie Meyers, the current editor, took over.
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