Welcome to College Fashion’s biweekly column, Fashionably Informed. As a CF reader, it’s clear that you love fashion. But have you ever wondered about the drama that goes on behind the scenes? To keep you up to speed, this column aims to inform you about important issues and controversies in the fashion industry.

In case you missed them, see past posts on Retouching & Photoshopping, Tanning Promotion in the Media, and Hypocrisy in Beauty Marketing.

Gabby’s natural skin color (right) compared to Elle magazine cover | Photos via ELLE and Pacific Coast News

The first part of our series on racism in the fashion industry focused on the racism that sometimes occurs in model selection. Today, we will be discussing the media’s “white-washing” of darker models and celebrities.

Table of Contents

What is “White-Washing”?

When we say “white-washing,” we are referring to the artificiallightening of someone’s skin color so that they conform to the culturally created (and needless to say, wrong) idea of lighter skin being more beautiful than dark skin.

The belief that lighter skin is more beautiful is nothing new to our society. In the last “Fashionably Informed” article, we discussed how this belief affects what we see on the runways. As we mentioned then, only about 20% of the models to walk in the last NYFW were women of color (i.e. non-white). In an even earlier post, we also discussed the use of skin lightening cream in India.

However, the fashion industry’s preference for light skin does not stop there. If and when darker models or celebrities are chosen for magazine covers or beauty campaigns, their skin is often lightened. There have been quite a few incidents where magazines and cosmetic companies have been accused of lightening a celebrity’s skin color. Let’s discuss a few.