French Magazine Continues Ugly Blackface Trend

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by Drew Grant | 9:19 am, February 20th, 2010

» 6 comments

Boo-la-la: The French magazine industry certainly isn’t learning anything from the controversy created around French Vogue last October, when the title featured model Lara Stone in blackface and subsequently saw huge backlash from people around the world whose jaws just…dropped. But hey, maybe any publicity is good publicity, considering that the French menswear mag L’Officiel Hommes just did the same exact shoot, only with male models in a fashion spread called “Keep It Goin’ Louder.” So not only is it racist, it’s unoriginal.

Look, we get there this is a cultural difference here: that French history doesn’t contain the exact same atrocities to African-Americans as uh, America does. Still, whenever you play dress-up with other people’s identity, you’re toeing a fine line between envelope-pushing and envelope-falling-to-the-floor-and-exploding. Check out the rest of the images from below in our gallery.

Click images to enlarge

blackface, French Vogue, L’Officiel Hommes

Azarkhan

” In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”
President Obama

How dare you lecture the Europeans! It smacks of “arrogance…[and is] dismissive, even derisive.”
http://www.facebook.com/people/Janet-Shan/1127645593 Janet Shan

Tacky. Downright tacky. Either the French magazines’ editors are plain dumb or they are racist. This reeks of insensitivity.

http://blackpoliticalthought.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/people/Andr-Kenji-De-Sousa/731129656 André Kenji De Sousa

Give me a break. That´s offensive in the United States because of it´s history of segregation. Outside the United States few people even know why Americans finds that to be racist.

And that´s not only in countries like France with few blacks, but even in country where almost all the population would be black by American Standards like Brazil few people cares.
ultranol

What’s really offensive about this is that Americans think that every culture in the world should have the same imagery and standards than theirs. If blackface is something racist and unacceptable in America, in other places in the world blackface is absolutely nothing, it doesn’t even have a definition. Blackface simply does not exist.

Really, do you think your culture is the only one in the world?
marymoffet

You know what would be really funny?
If that black stuff never came off.
Then they’d have to live the rest of their lives as real “blacks”.
ROFLMAO!!
Oh my!!
How would they explain that?? …
“Well duhhhh , I’m REALLY WHITE! You’ve got to believe me!”
LOL!
And I betcha, after a few months of living as a “real black”, they’d kill to get that color OFF of them.
marymoffet

BTW, I WONDER why they don’t just use “black” models?
Kinda dumb.