Naomi Campbell turns pale at sight of Thai magazine

The ones at Vogue Thailand went for a tidal wave with a picture of supermodel Naomi Campbell that would be unremarkable except that she no longer looks – how shall we put this – quite as African-American.
The “whitening” of Naomi Campbell might have been cleverly explained away as a symbolic cleansing of her past public sins, but no such excuses were forthcoming as the furore spread around the world ahead of the November issue’s release today.
“Photoshop of Horrors: Vogue Thailand lightens Naomi Campbell’s skin and we’re not having it,” TheGloss.com strongly objected. “We hardly recognised you, Naomi Campbell,” Huffington Post huffed. Closer to home, Khao Sod shed a few choice critical words. The social media, needless to say, went berserk.
One of the most common complaints addressed Naomi Campbell’s failure to look like Naomi Campbell. Her local fans tend to love the supermodel’s “lite” version just as much, but many more comments and posts condemned Thailand’s obsession with pale skin and some even suggested that racism might lurk behind the retouching.
“It’s such a shame that retouchers aren’t just over-Photoshopping but in fact lightening the skin tone,” someone called Cosmic Voices wrote in Fashion Spot’s iFS Forum.
“It’s hard not to see a racial side to this – they lightened her skin and eyes, for god’s sake,” The Gloss fumed. The Huffington Post ran the original photo of the “real world” Naomi side by side with the brighter “Vogue Thailand Naomi” and asked readers, “Tell us if you can pinpoint the difference.”
Calmer tones were heard at FashionSpot.com. “The face is a bit airbrushed and she doesn’t need it that much, but otherwise I like it,” a Miss Dalloway said. “I like the 60s feeling,” agreed GlamorousBoy.
Vogue Thailand came up with a sort-of explanation on its Facebook page yesterday, posting a screenshot of an email from photographer Marcin Tysza, who shot the cover and the pictures of Naomi inside the magazine. “All my pictures have pastel tones – light, soft colours. That’s my style,” says the shutterbug (whose exposure settings nevertheless might need adjusting, we dare say). “If you see the rest of the story, all the pictures are like this – everything is light, including her skin.”
Evidently he wanted to recreate the Prada ’60s look, taking advantage of Campbell’s wrinkle-free complexion. He said Naomi and her agent had seen the pictures and loved them. So Tysza is sticking to those “pastel” tones and says he’ll be shooting more celebrities that way. (Watch out, Denzel Washington.)
A staff member at Vogue Thailand says it owns the Campbell photos exclusively. Every country’s edition can choose its cover girls. As for that bright skin, she says, well, studio lighting and makeup don’t produce the same results you get from the red carpet. “There was no intention of ‘whitewashing’ her. Come on, if we didn’t like her skin colour, we wouldn’t have chosen her in the first place!”
As things stand, Vogue Thailand must absolutely love Naomi. This issue is going to sell in busloads, and not just in Thailand.