On Thursday actress Lupita Nyong’o called out fashion magazine Grazia U.K. for photoshopping her hair, posting side by side pictures of the original photos from the shoot and the eventual cover on Instagram.
“As I have made clear so often in the past with every fiber of my being, I embrace my natural heritage and despite having grown up thinking light skin and straight, silky hair were the standards of beauty, I now know that my dark skin and kinky, coily hair are beautiful too,” she wrote in the caption. “I am disappointed that @graziauk invited me to be on their cover and then edited out and smoothed my hair to fit their notion of what beautiful hair looks like.” You can see in the photos that Nyong’o’s curly pony tail was completely photoshopped off in the cover.
Grazia UK issued a statement to the Fader, writing:
Grazia is committed to representing diversity throughout its pages and apologizes unreservedly to Lupita Nyong’o. Grazia magazine would like to make it clear that at no point did they make any editorial request to the photographer for Lupita Nyong’o’s hair to be altered on this week’s cover, nor did we alter it ourselves. But we apologize unreservedly for not upholding the highest of editorial standards in ensuring that that we were aware of all alterations that had been made.
While fashion magazine covers are frequently, unsurprisingly, photoshopped, the altering of Nyong’o’s natural hair style here is similar to when Solange Knowles spoke out against how The Evening Standard photoshopped her hair just last month.
Knowles pointed out on her Instagram story that her braids from the covershoot, which had been fashioned in a crown, had been completely photoshopped from the eventual cover. The magazine issued an apology, writing, “The decision to amend the photograph was taken for layout purposes but plainly we made the wrong call and we have offered our unreserved apologies to Solange.”
Hopefully Edward Enniful’s new British Vogue, which is shaping up to be a fashion magazine that’s actually committed to diversity on the pages and behind the scenes, can teach these other UK magazines a thing or two.
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