Are We Obsessed With Perfection? Lupita Nyongo Vanity Fair Controversy

Lupita-Nyongo-skin-lightening-controversy

Image: CHRIS PIZZELLO/INVISION/AP

This morning I woke up to my Facebook timeline ablaze with images of actress Lupita Nyong’o. We’ve professed our love for Lupita on LoveBrownSugar before so of course I was excited to see that my girl Lupes (that’s what I call her as my BFF in my head) is still on the circuit. She is heavy on the tip of everyone’s tongue after her grandiose and utterly beautiful red carpet debut at the Golden Globes this past weekend.

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Related: Lupita Nyong’o Covers W Magazine

To my disappointment though, my timeline was not filled with big-ups and congratulations for Lupita but instead with rage and anger over what I’m sure will be the first of many “scandals” surrounding Lupita’s skin color. According to sources like Huffington Post, elite fashion publication Vanity Fair released a sneak peek picture of Lupita being featured in an upcoming editorial yesterday evening, and fans are in uproar because it appears as if her skin has been lightened. Welp, sad to say but I was waiting for this tragic moment to happen.

lupita-vanity-fairSeeing the comments and all the uproar really put my panties in a bunch. Not because I’m upset with Vanity Fair, because in my humble opinion I do NOT think this was done on purpose (I think it was the creative direction & lighting of the shoot), but I was upset because of the IMMEDIATE conclusions that were drawn simply because Lupita is of a darker complexion. If her skin is dark, it MUST appear this way because they want her to be lighter. Why? Because lighter is better. As a former editor, I know all too well about how this backlash plays out – especially for actresses of color.

Back in 2011, I was on editorial staff at luxury lifestyle publication UPTOWN Magazine and something very similar occurred when we released the cover story for starlet Sanaa Lathan. Many readers complained that they believed Sanaa’s picture was lightened to make her appear closer to caucasian. This was incredibly disappointing, considering the entire edit staff is comprised of people of color who would never intentionally venture to change the skin complexion of a fellow sister. What baffled me most was that people jumped to the “colorism” conversation instead of giving the publication the benefit of the doubt regarding lighting or creative direction.

Uptown Magazine May 2011

And it led me to a closer understanding of how we think. Because of the images in media we’re bombarded with, people automatically assume that women of color aren’t perfect the way they are. So something MUST have been done to alter her appearance. And sadly it’s true. There ARE publications that do this – in the past and even now.

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This and a few other recent happenings have asserted for me that the idea of “perfection” and what is viewed as perfect in our society is incredibly warped and skewed. When we face the reality that there are publications going lengths to make skin lighter, waistline’s smaller, and boobs & butts bigger, it’s a sad one to digest.

I recently read an article over at SheFinds.com that poked fun at the idea that Kim Kardashian’s recent “post-baby body” Instagram picture was in fact photoshopped (see below)

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They took staff members like my fellow blogger friends Jessica Andrews and Jihan Forbes and warped their bikini bodies in the vein of Kim Kardashian’s alleged photoshop reconstruction and the results were appalling and yet insanely hilarious (see below for Jihan’s pic).

Jihan-Forbes-Photoshop
(Left: Original, Right: Video Vixen Edit)

Is this what we’ve come to? Are we so incredibly obsessed with our bodies and our lives being completely perfect that imperfections are completely out of the question? To the point where celebrities have to photoshop their IG pictures? Better yet, how is this obsession with perfection taking a toll on us as individuals?

When I think about the vision boards we’re creating for ourselves this year and our impending New Year’s resolutions – are we aiming to be better or to be “perfect”? And if the latter, are we setting ourselves up for failure?

I’d love to hear you guys’ thoughts on this! Feel free to leave comments below.

We’ll be hosting another LBS Lounge chat on this Sunday 1/19 that covers this particular topic of perfection and our obsession with it. Tune in at 6:30PM and follow @LoveBrownSugar using hashtag #LBSLounge to be part of the conversation.

Christina Brown

Lifestyle influencer and digital mompreneur Christina S. Brown is a New York native, LA resident, and the founder of LoveBrownSugar.com and BrownGirlsLove. She's an award-winning storyteller, a motivational speaker and an advocate for confident millennial black women.

4 Comments
    1. Thanks for stopping by Tori! Yes, I remember this happening more than once with Beyonce. It’s just sad. I mean whether or not Vanity Fair actually did lighten her skin is still to be determined but just the fact that we (as readers) were looking for it is what bothers me. It’s so ingrained in us, it’s natural to assume that they would try to lighten her skin. And to me that says more about us than it does about the publication.

  1. As young ladies we “look” to celebrities for everything fashion and try to emulate them but is it to find self worth or just to be another follower. As for the lighten of the skin stories I have taken pictures and had to take a step back when I saw the because I looked really “light skinned”. Black people on a whole always look to find the negatives rather than the positves in every situation.

  2. There is a OWN network video with Oprah interviewing India Arie about her most recent album cover showing her with lightened skin. It was an interesting interview because India Arie herself touched upon this issue and how disappointed she was that her fans would think that was her intention. As she put it, she wanted her skin to “glow” and be “golden”, so the lighting was manipulated to reflect that.

    Therefore, I agree with you in regard to Lupita Nyong’o and Sanaa Lathan’s photoshoots…It’s just lighting. Perhaps, I see it more easily because I used to be photographed in front of primarily white backgrounds with really strong lighting for ballet…your skin color WILL look different. Not even mentioning the fact that depending on the time of year I could be a lighter skin tone as well…

    But as opposed to bickering over lighting, I think the african american community should focus on our issues with colorism and why it still affects how we each other and how other races treat us as well.