by Donalea Scott
Was surprised and very disappointed to see that a non-western country such as the Philippines would conceive such a magazine front cover that is not just racially sensitive but is depreciative of black people by assimilating the colour of black skin with that of darkness, immorality, bad/evil in contrast to the white skin of the posing native actress Bela Padila as being good, godly, virtuous.
With the magic of lighting & photoshop in this day and age I really don't think it was necessary to use black models in the shoot (the model on the right, standing doesn't look naturally black which would make it worse if they painted her that colour) to achieve the theme conveyed in its tagline of 'stepping out of the shadows'.
Guess it shows Philippines assimilation with western cultural ideals on race and (female) beauty, though kinda obvious with the fact that they actually have their own edition of FHM, a western lads mag!
Am glad the cover was pulled as I think the tagline was very offensive. What do you think?
This article originally appeared here, reprinted with permission.
Discovered, to my dismay, the other models were 'blacked' up.
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