Gigi Hadid covers the latest issue of Vogue Italia. Yes. This is supposed to be Gigi Hadid. First of all, this looks nothing like her. Second of all, many are claiming that this is “blackface.” I feel like we’ve been on high alert for racism and racial insensitivities in European fashion magazines for years now – for some reason, European editors think it’s absolutely hilarious and high-fashion to put Caucasian models in blackface, in jungle-themed editorials. It always falls flat and they always get called out for it internationally.
But I have to ask: do you really consider this blackface? I’m not an expert at this, obviously. I do feel like *sometimes* there are cries of “blackface!” when a white model is simply noticeably BRONZE. A crazy overuse of bronzer is, in my opinion, not the same as blackface. So is this is an example of bronzeface or blackface?
Whatever it going on here, I would hope that Vogue Italia would offer some kind of explanation. Regardless of the skin color issue, they should at least explain why Gigi looks so f–king unrecognizable on this cover. Here’s the video from the cover shoot – I think they were trying to style her like vintage ‘70s Bianca Jagger. Which would have been cool, if not for the aggressive bronzing.
Video and cover courtesy of Vogue Italia.
The photoshop is worse than the tanner/bronzer.
Yes, ELX. I came on to say that, regardless of the motivation (if there was any in particular),it’s not even attractive.
Right……if you paid me $10,000 I would never say that this Gigi Hadid
When I first saw this photo of bronzed Gigi on here, I thought “Wow, why is Celebitchy writing about Tatianna from Rupaul’s Drag Race?” lol
It’s awful. Doesn’t look like her at all. I can’t judge but using a black model wouldn’t kill them.
I grew up in Europe. Our high fashion mags have always featured heavily tanned, obviously white women and it had nothing to do with trying to make them look black. Being crazy tanned used to be all the rage where I lived because it meant you had money to travel to tropical countries, or even the Med. Sometimes a tan is just a tan.
So when you were growing up in Europe did people also darken their hair and eyes?
@wtf, Seriously? People all around the world darken their hair. Some dye it dark, some go a lighter color, but it’s a regular thing to do. Eyes? I have natural blue eyes, but I sometimes wear different colored contact lenses, even brown. Is that bad?
@wtf – if you’ve heard of Goths, they used to have a big thing for darkening hair.
@ WTF: clear yes from germany. Half of the people make their hair brighter, the other half makes it dark. Black and brown hair are very very popular here and this is not limited to goth people. I have dyed mine pitch black since 20+ years. Same goes for eyebrows. Also some people like to look as white as possible (again: goths, but no political/race ingredient in this) and some like to look as sunburnt as possible and some dream of anything in the middle. In germany, the only rule seems to be that nobody feels happy with the way they are born and strives for something else 😀 I think I dont know a single person with their original hair colour.
Everytime something like this happens, black and brown people are put in the position of explaining the difference between beauty choices and blackface (and why blackface is not okay). If they had just bronzed her to hell and back OR darkened her eyes OR darkened her hair, then maybe – but the fact that they did all three and then put her in this weird iteration of “ethnic” clothing is exactly the problem. How hard is it just to respect each other? If you want a black/brown model, why not just get one? It’s not like there aren’t hundreds of thousands of them looking for work. Why add insult to injury by treating ethnicity like its an outfit that you can just try on for the day? I don’t know what is worse, being marginalized or the chorus of voices telling you that it’s not happening to you.
Honestly, it’s exhausting.
@WTF
“this weird iteration of “ethnic” clothing”. Do you really see ethnic clothing in this cover? It’s more Alice in Wonderland IMO.
… what ethnicity has traditional ethnic clothing consisting of a sequin jumpsuit covered in the Queen of Hearts??
I agree. it’s obvious from the model (boyfriend type who I presume is supposed to be Italian?) in the back that they are both obviously sporting dark tans. It is the summer issue, so tans are back in according to Vogue Italia! I’m not saying it looks good, I’m just saying I don’t think they are trying to do blackface.
Sometimes we’re too woke, we need to go to bed.
It doesn’t take a genius to admit that at 1st take this looks like a black model, but upon reading the bylines- Oh–it’s Gigi “trying on” a black model’s aura. Seriously, let’s just admit it it ‘shopped as a black thing. Of course, many will argue against it, but we have eyes.
Her eyes are not darkened and still blue. And what, a model is not allowed to dye her hair?? lol
@magicalday: Actually, this doesn’t doesn’t look to me at all like a black model—neither her skin tone nor her features, though I certainly wouldn’t have recognized it as Gigi Hadid,either! That super narrowed nose, that pale gold skin, blue eyes: nothing about this reads “black model” or “black face” to me, any more than it reads Gigi Hadid. She’s just so transformed, her normally round face chiseled oblong, her nose absurdly, painfully thin—for a model whose fame lies, partly, in her instant recognition factor, I have no idea why she has been made to look like someone else completely! (She actually looks more like a computer generated image of a person/model than a living, breathing human being. Which is–fine, I guess, but why bother?) I believe, with the eerie deep golden skin, they are attempting to make her look like she has a dark sun tan, in celebration of the magazine’s first summer issue? Whatever else, no matter how bizarre the photo is, I certainly don’t see her “trying on” the “aura” of a black woman. I’ve seen the enraging offensiveness of black face before, and this is not it. (And yes, lol, I have eyes.)
I think it’s bronze face, they’re trying to make her look Italian I think. It depends on the context imo. Like that stupid countess who dressed up as Diana Ross. If you’re portraying a POC, darkening your skin is a no no, imo. I get that some think they’re just trying to nail their “character” but skin tone is not a costume to take on and off.
Doesn’t make much sense. While I don’t think it’s black or brown face, I also think they could have put Jourdan Dunn on the cover and achieved the same thing, so why make GiGi unrecognizable. Makes no sense.
That said, Hadid is half Middle Eastern I’m sure it’s not hard for her to tan. But they obviously were striking a diff look with the hair dye and darker eyes.
I get what you’re saying but darker skinned Italians (like myself) are olive skinned and not that coppery-bronze they coloured her face with. Maybe they were going for the Jersey-Shore “Italian” look? I kid, I kid. But this looks like brownface to me. They also darkened her eyes and hair.
I’m usually very sensitive to Blackface and I just don’t see it here at all. I think they went overboard with the bronzer and that she was already probably pretty tan as it’s summer. As far as her clothes, I think they were trying to play up a MENA type thing since she’s half Palestinian rather than a West/South/East African thing.
Yeah, I think they were going for “gold.” Or bronze. Or whatever. It’s definitely too shiny to be human.
@OriginalLala –
As is Snooki’s Chilean coppery-bronze? She became the quintessential Italian-American Guidette thanks to her adopted family, so presumably she has some right to that identity …. ?
@Agenbiter I’m not sure what you’re insinuating here but all I was saying is that the skin tone they gave Gigi was more in line with the deep fake tan look favored by the Jersey Shore guidos and guidettes. It’s clear that they wanted to darken her skin, I’m saying it’s a miss.
It’s just your comment about ‘coppery-bronze’ raised this issue:
“Snooki was born in Santiago, Chile.[6] She was adopted when she was six months old and was raised by Italian-American parents.[7] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snooki”
If her background is indigenous Chilean, is it cultural appropriation to present herself as Italian?
No insinuation intended – I think it’s an interesting question,
She was raised in the culture so she is totally Italian culturally! my cousin was adopted from China as a baby and she totally identifies as Italian as its the culture she was raised in.
Italians are not an oppressed people, so no, it is not cultural appropriation
I actually think there is cultural appropriate of Italians when it comes to the mafia movies. MANY Italian-Americans can’t stand the way Italians are represented in those movies, and there have been many protests by Italian-American groups. And then based on those movies, entertainers in other areas like the music industry use common Italian surnames like Gotti, Gambino etc, as part of their brand as a gangster.
Even though the era where Italians flat out weren’t considered white is long into the past, Italians absolutely faced ethnic discrimination on a very wide scale as recently as the 1960’s, and these portrayals didn’t help. While it’s not a big deal for younger people, there are MANY older Italian Americans who did come of age in a time when they faced employment, housing and social discrimination due to being Italian, who hate these portrayals and do consider them appropriation. Especially appropriating specific Italian surnames. It would be clear appropriate if someone who wasn’t Latino appropriated the stage name “Escobar” because they wanted to have a gangster image. Same goes for Gambino and Italian names.
Why would they put an Afro wig on her if they wanted her to look Italian? The pics inside the magazine are more offensive than the one on the cover.
BAM! No one is talking about this.. the fro is the biggest problem and why some see this a full blown black face. its tacky AF.
@me
IMO it’s just weird how people simultaneously fetishize and discriminate against brown & black skin.
That’s her?
bronzer not black face
looks like how i did after my bronzer spray tan session for las vegas.
why do people make a big deal out of nothing sometimes
Definitely bronzer + she looks awful.
I don’t know if it’s black face, but maybe using other models besides the Hadid sisters and Kendull Jenner would help. Vogue, there are women out there who have naturally darker skin and are just as (if not more) beautiful. So boring, so predictable.
We had more diversity in the 90s… I can’t name a single new model who isn’t someone’s kid. Mostly white.
Looks like she did “somebody else’s face.”
Uh…I mean, this couldn’t get more blackface if it tried, tbh. Her skin is definitively darkened. Compound that with the outfit’s cut and colors, which hearkens back to some of the more colorful cuts of traditional fabrics you see in countries like Nigeria. The outfit itself has “Oriental” type faces all over it. It’s literally one of the most obnoxious things I’ve seen in awhile on a magazine.
Not to mention they gave her brown contacts……
Her eyes stil lookl blue on the cover though…. those are some really crappy ‘brown contacts’ if she had them.
I could be wrong but the faces on her clothing seem to be Queen Elizabeth 1. Not sure how that fits into this mess of a cover shoot
That’s possible. I read them as “geisha” faces, but that was my first takeaway. Still doesn’t explain the skin or eyes, though.
I think the image on the outfit is of the queen of hearts. It really brings to mind the hyper-stylized Tim Burton version, but it’s an image I’m familiar with outside of his version.
https://goo.gl/images/uY99Uz
Of course it’s the Queen of Hearts.
Yes, it is obviously the Queen of Hearts. (How does anyone see Nigeria, there!?! ) And I see natural blue eyes, on her, not brown contact lenses–and, even if they were brown, how on earth would that be “blackface?” Most of the world has brown eyes, including Middle Easterners and Italians, not just blacks, first of all, and secondly, now that colored contacts exist, people of ALL races enjoy changing the color of their eyes! (I have blue eyes, but I used to like wearing amber and green lenses.) Seriously,some people on here are REALLY eagerly, angrily looking to be offended and outraged!!! As if there’s not enough *true* prejudice, discrimination, intolerance, ignorance, and cruelty in the world, they go on their own little crusades to find hatred and bigotry wherever they go, determined to find it even when it isn’t there. It must be an alarming, sad, and infuriating way to navigate (and dedicate) one’s life.
It’s the Queen of Hearts and it is far from being Nigerian. I see more a copy of something Gianni Versace designed back in 1990.
I’d prefer to be wrong on the outfit, so I’m not upset about being corrected on it. The whole thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, though, especially because of the contact lenses.
Overuse of bronzer on a dead in the eyes face. I don’t understand the amount of work the Hadid sisters get, they have no personality.
Gigi Hadid’s father is ethnic Palestinian and that means he has an arabian skin tan which isn’t caucasian white. Technically Gigi is mixed and she might be as not fair white skinned caucasian as we think. Her other editorials might lie about that = they photoshopped her whiter. As long as she doesn’t go to get a suntan she is likely caucasian white. See her childhood pics.
His chest is more bronzed that his face
http://celebrityinsider.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Gigi-and-Mohamed-Hadid-Bravo-TV-e1517606930894.jpg
In some pics Gigi’s face is paler than her legs and arms and Hashimoto’s doesn’t cause that.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a7/6b/86/a76b867689ea9ae0d388b77b5bd10b9d.jpg
https://pics.wikifeet.com/Shiva-Safai-Feet-1330388.jpg
https://images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/201815/rs_746x749-180205111422-Screen_Shot_2018-02-05_at_1.17.11_PM.png
http://c-in.ru/uploads/p/2015-07-22/otca_modeli_dzhidzhi_hadid_obvinyayut_v_krazhe_zemli_u_89-letnej_zhenshini.jpg
https://images-production.global.ssl.fastly.net/uploads/photos/file/89923/gigi-hadid-david-foster.png
That’d be a good explanation if we hadn’t seen hundreds of paparazzi photos where her skin is noticeably lighter naturally. I think they were trying to make her look more Italian. The Photoshop is sooooo bad!
Probably tans her body (or uses a lower spf) but protects her face with higher SPF/hat – I’m not white (or a model relying on their face for work!) and I still do that.
Unless they’ve photoshopped every single red carpet appearance and candid photo of Gigi, she’s not anywhere near that tan in skin tone normally. She’s light-skinned, maybe even medium-light when she’s tanned, but not this dark or bronzed. This is actively changing her skin tone with makeup or photoshop.
Hashimoto’s doesn’t cause that but using sunscreen will. She’s a woman who lives by her looks – she’s going to make sure to slather on the sunscreen on her face at the very least. I’m fair skinned and use SPF30 on my body in the summer because they take longer to tan, but I always use SPF50 on my face because it gets the most exposure.
Some (not all) people of MENA origin, especially in the Maghreb where there is a lot mixing with Amazigh but also in parts of the Middle East, can have a somewhat light complexion or even be pale. Gigi falls into that category—she’s clearly wearing bronzer here.
gigi always SPFs her skin which is why she is so pale. “naturally” aka without heavy SPF and probably even without direct suntanning she would be one or two notches more bronzed. She is half-arabian. I know a lot of these girls and they work hard at keeping their skin as light as possible. Chinese girls, too.
I clicked on the video and boy is this woman emaciated. She had such a gorgeous body and face.
This is how I a look at the end of the summer in all my photos.
I am “olive skin” although I hate that expression and since many people treat me in the UK as if I was of an ethnicity other than white and seem disappointed or disgruntled when I say I am Portuguese, I guess this skin tone is considered “ethnic” (in fashion terms).
In my personal case I could not care less, white, olive skin or “other ethnicities” as in the UK forms, I am very happy with my skin tone.
Fashion mags seem to use skin colour as an accessory though which is bizarre in today’s general climate.
yeah when she was shaking her butt to the camera it is so flat i actually thuoght she was facing the camera and that it was her pelvis area
Her colour here is no different from everytime she does a beachy, sun kissed photo shoot. The fake tan and bronzer with this hair colour and style of makeup looks incongruous, so it stands out more.
I agree – I think it’s the styling and that it so obviously looks unlike her usual self that sets off alarm bells. I thought it was Joan Smalls at first!
In the still photo she looks like Chloe Green, IMO. That silly socialite who hooked up with Hot Felon.
Bad picture. That looks nothing like her, but it looks like they were trying to give her an olive skin tone to make her look Italian while on the cover of an Italian magazine. She doesn’t look any darker than my white friends after spending the day in the sun at the beach. That’s not blackface
This isn’t ‘black’face, it;s ‘Italian’ face. Genuine question, really not snarking: can darkening of skin so one kind of white person can look like another kind of white person racist?
Because I’m partly Italian and I’m so pale I use nearly the lightest Fenty foundation color and my sister’s complexion is naturally as dark as Gigi in this photo. people literally have asked my mother if we have two different fathers (we do not.) So if this racism if they darken her skin so she looks Italian??
It’s not racism as it is not based on race. It’s just fetishising a certain kind of skin tone and perhaps even a certain idea of Italian rich women always on vacation.
yes me too. i’m italian mexican and spray tan and look like gigi here
my sister is naturally tanner skin than me
The problem isn’t whether the intent was to make her look Italian. The problem is that Gigi is an American model. That means she’s grown up in a country with serious racial divides, and black face has a very serious history here as a way of both simultaneously deriding POC and limiting their media opportunities by using white models in their place. These things can’t exist without that context.
Again – it’s an Italian magazine that’s aiming to make its light-skinned Palestinian-American cover model look like a certain type of Italian woman.
I don’t see why Gigi being American makes this blackface – if it’s truly offensive then why should the nationality of the model make a difference? If it’s offensive then it’s offensive irrespective of whether the model is Gigi or Bianca Balti or Mariacarla Boscono (the latter two are Italian).
Yes, I understand that, colorism absolutely does exist everywhere in Western culture. My point is that Gigi as an American should just be even more aware of it because of the extent of the racial division here. You cannot remove a Western magazine from the context of that history. I can hear the argument against it being blackface specifically, but it still inevitably reflects implications of darker skin being something that can put on or worn as an accessory. Which wouldn’t be a problem except people encounter legitimate prejudice for having skin in this shade or darker. Why choose a lighter skinned model and darken her superficially AND change her eye color with contacts when you could have chosen one that actually looked like that?
That is the problem I’m grappling with here. That is what makes me uncomfortable looking at it.
But they’re an Italian magazine making her look Italian, which I think is different than say, a Western magazine taking a white American model and making her look like she’s Asian, or Middle Eastern, or African, or South Asian, or Hasidic, or anything like that.
And why they chose Gigi Hadid instead of another Italian model, presumably is because she’s Gigi Hadid. She’s a big celebrity model so they want her in the editorial.
I understand what the intention is. The issue is not what ethnicity they are trying to make her look. It is how they did it. My point is that their intention is not the same as the interpretation by the viewer. At the end of the day, they took a lighter skinned woman with light eyes, significantly darkened her skin, hair, and eyes, and then slapped her on the front cover of a popularly read magazine. In a world where things like colorism and racism didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have an issue with it. But since we DO live in that world, yes, I do find it in poor taste.
There’re italian stereotypes and I guess a degree of prejudice between “northern” and “southern” italians.
Humans and their prejudices – the fun never stops!
Bronzer and sh***y lighting.
It’s a terrible cover, but it doesn’t read “blackface” to me. I think she was bronzed up to look more tanned “italian”. Which is stereotypical itself, but hey. the worse ‘crime” is that she looks awful.
Right. The problem is that this is awful.
I remember Linda Evangelista in her heyday channellig Sophia Loren. Dark hair, darker skin tone, pose, makeup, Italian setting, But she was gorgeous and nobody felt discriminated or offended. Even if there surely were plenty of available models from South Italy who didn’t need a complete makeover to look Neapolitan.
And, by the way, are people from Naples entitled to fell offended if a model from, let’s say, Venice is hired to channel Sophia?
I think ‘they’ (White Europeans/Italians) consider her a Muslim first and anything else second and I think they put out an image of what they think a Muslim lady looks like, of course they all have dark skin! (*sarcasm*). That is my take on it.
As a black woman I’m baffled at this attempt to make her look Italian. I’m subscribed to Italian Vogue on Instagram and this is really bad makeup. My friends who are Italian, tan but they don’t look like this either. This is an editorial “idea” gone awry.
This is what happens when you do too much cocaine on the day of production. As her agency i would have never allowed the photos to be published, they are incredibly bad. Even from an “artistic” point of view.
WTF is going on in that video tho
WTF? Looks nothing like her regardless of face color!
So if I look like this after vacation, add more of my bronzer & use my self tanner to add to the glow…. am I doing blackface?
Also how will people know that I’m not?
Are you really asking these questions? Come on.
Not sure this is exactly black face, I think they’re going for a Mediterranean look. But why not just hire a model who looks like that lol
I do not understand why they bother using this girl in so many covers when they feel the need to make her look like a different person in almost every single one. It’s like they’re just giving covers away.
I don’t think it’s black face. This cover was shot by Steven Klein who likes to saturate colors. As a result models’ skin always looks unnatural. It reminds me of his last Vogue cover with Vikander. The problem is that this style is clashing with Gigi’s natural pale skin and colors.
Steven Klein put Lara Stone in blackface for French Vogue in 2009, so… this isn’t a great argument.
That looks nothing like her. Yikes.
It’s not just the skin tone, the background on the cover is not white. It has been “bronzed” as well.
Good Lord. I thought this was supposed to be Solange when I first saw the thumbnail image. What a bad idea this was.
That’s not Gigi. No way in hell. Can’t be.
I went to Italy once without a tan and the Italians I stayed with mocked me endlessly for being so pale. Next time I went I spray tanned for my own sanity. Bronze up Gigi…. I get it.
Really? I am Italian and ginger. You know the Tiziano kind of woman. I never tan, I use sunscreen during winter and total block in summer. Most of my friends do the same and nobody bothers me with comments on my skin tone.
This is really not “blackface”. It’s a hilariously bad spray tan and seriously, is that ACTUALLY Gigi? Looks NOTHING like her.
Gigi is unrecognizable, I don’t think it’s black face because to me she looks more South Asian / middle Eastern / Sicilian / latina / Slovakian but not black. What I don’t get is why not get a model who already has the aesthetic they were going for, with dark hair, skin and eyes.
Actually in the 60ies and 70ies this was the look many white caucasian girls went for: heavy (sun/fake) tan and pink lipstick.
https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/tan-adverts-12.jpg
Try old pics of Doris Day:
https://i2-prod.irishmirror.ie/incoming/article3148325.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200/Doris-Day.jpg
http://www.sndfilms.com/website/wp-content/uploads/DD11-Ullstein-Doris-Day.jpg
Slovakian??? Have you been to Central Europe, the whitest place on the planet?
I thought it was just a terrible filter
In the early 20th century southern Italians were definitely NOT considered white in the US. The klan were very anti Southern European and didn’t want them polluting white blood lines. If that adds anything to the discussion….(I see no problem here beyond bad styling)
Blackface? That’s a reach. Tan, yes, summer is coming. Jesus no one can do anything anymore without it becoming a debate or controversy. What about the magazines in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s when everyone was tan or using pounds of bronzer, or dying their hair black or brown? Why isn’t is an issue when women of color dye their hair blonde? Can we all just exist on some sort of peaceful level and not analyze every single thing everyone does. Not EVERYTHING that occurs is insensitive. I am tan right now, if I use bronzer when I go out is that blackface? Cmon.
I mean…I think this one’s complicated, and IMO the complication is not because of the specific shade of her skin (ie the tan). She’s just tan and bronzed up. She’s half Palestinian, and I’ve seen caucasian women with naturally darker tans than this after a summer at the beach. The problem in this photo, IMO, is that they made her hair darker, and her eyes darker, and pulled her hair back and emphasized her forehead and fuller lips in a way that’s…like, if you told me this woman was part white and part Ethiopian, I’d believe it. It’s not the parts themselves but the sum total of those parts that make people react.
Caucasian girls can get super tan naturally. BUT if they wanted a woman who looked mixed or North African, but they hire a white (half Arabic) girl and make her look North African, that’s a big problem. There’s no arguing that the fashion industry is super racist, fails in representation, fails when it comes to showing more than one type of beauty, and routinely makes white girls look more “exotic” instead of just hiring a woman from non white countries.
Plenty of indigenous North Africans are as light as the lightest Europeans: it’s not really a case of white=European, brown=north African (see Princess Lalla Salma, Andre Azoulay, Zubaida Tharwat, Hind Rostom, Jamila Awad, etc). There may be other pointers (face shape, etc) but skin tone isn’t one of them.
I think the main issue is that Vogue Italia and this photographer have a long and storied history with blackface so they get no benefit of the doubt.
She said something about this photograph being beyond her creative control and she has no say so in what the photographers do in editing etc. (Not in those words.) I believe her. I hope she gets angry about this and makes sure it’s never done to her again.
Ugly ugly ugly weird cover.
Whatever that is, it is horrible