I was expecting something like what they did to Mindy Kaling where they lightened her skin (way too much) but they didn’t make her look white, they straight up replaced her head.
I’d be pissed too. They didn’t just change her skin tone, they completely took her out of the photo. For models who are sometimes paid in exposure, this is like yanking that pay away from her. Whatever photoshop is done, she needs to at least look like it’s her for her to be able to get the benefits from doing the work.
But even models who are paid money, there should be laws against making them look like someone completely different, in terms of the brand that they work for.
And that designer is a pos for sharing that photo, even if a fan did send it to him as “fan art”. Beyond the face change being in bad taste, he’s a professional, so he should be promoting the actual model who walked for him.
The high fashion industry has always been a corrupt garbage fire.
Go right now to some normal store’s website and check out the clothing section. You are going to see normal looking people smiling. Why shouldn’t they be smiling? They have a nice sweater on.
High fashion it is all about taking these very unusual looking people, having them drain their face of touch of humanity, selling clothing that fits no one and costs thousands of dollars. And it is all performative. A game the super rich and their lackies are playing against other super rich and their lackies. If you had two investments available to you today the first is some “tech” company with an idea for a social media site and the other is a fashion maker the tech company (with it’s 5% chance of success) has a higher chance of success.
Lay down with dogs, get up with flies. This whitewashing is disgusting but not shocking especially given the decades of photo editing these shitstains have done.
She should be objecting to all the edits, not just the eye shape and overly filtered skin tones. Why did they need to edit her nose, or make that one giant dumbo ear? how could anyone think this mess is an improvent on the model’s great looks?
If I hadn’t read the headline, and just looked at the pictures, my first reaction wouldn’t that they changed they changed her race, but that they faked a ton of makeup, added highlights, and “enhanced” the outfit’s shoulders.
I knew someone who was a photographer in it and drunk one night she confessed how so many of those photos are fake. Just props and settings. The real model headshot just got moved around.
While the origin of the altered runway photo is unknown, Wu believes someone – she doesn’t know who – used AI to create the white face that covered hers, a theory Costello echoed in his Instagram post.
If you think the designer had no input into the photos from their own show, either you’re nuts or they don’t care very much about their designs.
I agree. The article even says they don’t know how the picture was edited or who edited it. It may not have anything to do with AI at all.
While the origin of the altered runway photo is unknown, Wu believes someone – she doesn’t know who – used AI to create the white face that covered hers, a theory Costello echoed in his Instagram post.
From the title by itself, I was expecting a simple change to skin tone, which would have been bad enough. Reading the story and looking at the pic made me realize that things are much, much worse. What the FUCK.
Supermodels are why I don’t really buy the whole “the media decides what’s attractive”, because it’s been trying to say that that’s the peak of attractiveness all my life but I’ve never bought it.
You aren’t wrong. High end women models and women porn stars look vastly different. One looks like a 19 year skinny boys the other look like women.
I think when people say that they mean that girls with confidence issues see these runway models and think that is what it means to be attractive, not that suddenly men will be attracted to that.
You know what is the worst thing about this for me.
According to his post, he did not produce the show and did not know that Wu was not compensated for her time until he saw her TikTok.
Not only did they cheat her out of being the model, and replacing her with a terrible AI photo. They also didnt pay her for doing the actual show, until this blew up and the designer saw the tiktok.
This isn’t saying she got paid after the TikTok – it’s saying the guy didn’t know she wasn’t paid, until he saw the TikTok. AFAIK she hasn’t been paid at all.
According to his post, he did not produce the show and did not know that Wu was not compensated for her time until he saw her TikTok. “After finding out through her videos that she wasn’t paid, I offered Shereen compensation for her time and talents,” Costello wrote.
It sounds like he at least offered to pay her, despite not being the one that was running the show and paying her.
He also initially threatened legal action against her, for unclear reasons. Like, he’s shared some racist Photoshop, gets called out for it, and his first response is to… Threaten to sue the model who simply made public comments about it?
Guy is a real piece of shit. He can walk back on stuff all he wants, but the first thing he did speaks volumes about what kinda person he is.
To be fair, Wu also states in the article that she wasn’t expecting to be paid in anything but “exposure.” But that i think is what makes this particularly egregious - she wasn’t even getting paid in that fake currency for the naive. Although the article says that many of the models are under a similar arrangement for the fashion week this occurred during, so maybe exposure still counts for something in the fashion and modeling industries.
Concern trolling, as are all accusations of “diluting a term” are. If girls at risk of being edited stayed out of the fashion industry - which was your advice - then the fashion industry would be left with only white women. But you knew that, didn’t you?
You all think it will stop at white women. It won’t. Next they’ll photoshop hair color. Then eye color. Then cheek depth. Then whatever fucking else they can find.
Lmao, it’s so fucking bizarre that you think you’re the only one who realises this.
You all want to make it about race, but the problem is deeper.
Wow, galaxy brain, how did you figure this out before the rest of us? Yeah it’s fundamentally fucked. But you’re absolutely deluded if you think this incident had nothing to do with race.
That superficial, artificial clique would be an entire industry as far as I can see you saying
That's not something that should be argued as "just a clique, why did you show up?". That'd be like saying the Activision/Blizzard scandal in the gaming industry was people who just should've accepted the shitty situation they were in. People should be able to say that an industry they want to be in is acting inappropriately.
I see you’re suggesting that she shouldn’t be surprised that the fucked up culture in the fashion industry is fucked up since everyone knows it’s fucked up. But what everyone else is trying to tell you is that we should still talk about how fucked up this is, because it’s fucked up.
I’m saying that maybe she shouldn’t have gotten into the modelling industry with the expectation that she’d be treated like a human.
Yeah victim blaming. Those are the words society uses for what you’re doing. In your defense of why it’s not victim blaming you are continuing to do so.
But that’s not the weird part because we all fuck up and need a reality check from time to time. I don’t care about the story so much. It’s an unfair situation and I’m glad she’s getting credit for her work and calling out a bad player (I mean doing this shit for exposure instead of money should have been the first clue, but she’s young and inexperienced and that’s not her fault).
But you, my friend, are clearly upset about this beyond reason and it makes me worry for you. I wish you luck in whatever war is raging inside yourself.
You’ve been in this thread for hours vehemently arguing over pointless bullshit. You say everything is perfectly normal, but your actions speak louder than words. This isn’t normal or healthy.
If I cared what anyone thinks about me interacting with sex workers I wouldn’t’ve have posted. I comment on all kinds of things. But you know that from creeping on my posts.
I think the point they’re trying to make is there are much worse things happening at a broader scale in the fashion industry than this one model being impacted by this event.
Oh, okay, maybe she should just shut up and take it then?
Nothing gets done if people don't talk about this stuff. The only power the masses have here is to turn this into a bad look for the companies involved.
Just don’t be surprised when the industry does this shit. It’s what they’ve always done.
You don't have to be surprised to find something worth talking about. We talk about unhinged politicians all the time, yet we've come to expect them. We talk about school shootings all the time, yet they are not a surprise any more.
So, when someone willingly joins them, and then complains about things being just as bad as everyone already knows, we can all look at them with pity, because they were too stupid to make the right choice earlier.
So your solution is for the victim here to simply leave the entire industry? Heh. Sure. Because that'll totally pan out alright.
How many industry swaps have you done in your lifetime, bud? Because with a new industry comes new skillsets and completely different training requirements, which often takes years to complete, not to mention requiring completely different ways of thinking.
“This wheat thresher destroyed my legs!” Says the person who jumped into the wheat thresher, while still inside the wheat thresher.
"This school shooter blew my legs off", says the foolhardy teen who had the audacity to become a student in the USA, then complain about school shooters.
So it's her fault that she's suffering from racial prejudices in the fashion industry? Because she dared to join and 'we all know what they're like'?
Interesting logic. Let's expand on that.
Are all women at fault for any misogyny they encounter in the tech industry? That industry's problem with women is VERY well documented, so they must know what they're getting into, right?
Or how about BMEs working in healthcare. The racial discrimination issues there are also well documented, so we can let those slide right, because they should have known?
People like you are the reason these things don't improve. Your acceptance of this status quo sickens me.
Healthcare. Tech. Shit, restaurant work. Pick a fucking profession that is even remotely necessary for the human race to progress.
So fashion gets a special racism pass because other industries are more essential?
You also forget that fashion has a big influence on wider culture. If racism is accepted there, it will seep into wider culture from that front.
Or is she at fault because she trained to work in the fashion industry and not another industry that you would prefer?
You're delusional, dude. Thinking people deserve racism because they work in a field you don't like. Does that make you more elitist or racist? I can't tell. Definitely a mixture though.
Ahhh okay. So just destroy an entire industry just because you don't like it. Gotcha. That sounds totally reasonable.
So let's put that mix at mostly elitist, but also racist because you somehow believe this woman's issues with racial discrimination can be brushed aside simply because of the industry she works in.
Hey, while we're at it let's destroy the music industry too. It's not strictly needed for human advancement. The movie industry can go too. Heck, all acting roles must go!
In all seriousness, you're crazy if you think the entire destruction of industries is the way to solve this. You are not right, you are insane. The fashion industry has existed for literal millennia. So long as people want to express themselves with clothing, it will always be a thing. There is no reason it has to go hand in hand with racism, and it can be reformed.
Shit, if anyone in this thread even bothered to read the article, they’d know that she’s not even pissed she got white-ified. She’s pissed her face isn’t in the photo, so she isn’t getting the recognition. She actually says that. It’s in the article. She doesn’t give a fuck about racism. That’s all manufactured outrage from The Guardian.
Apparently, much better to invent the racist motivation and put a biased headline. The perfect clickbait for the typical racist murcians (hilarious hypocrites who condemn whitewashing while defending blackwashing) who will ignore the main issue. I guess labor or image rights don't sell.
People are allowed to be upset by racism even if the target doesn’t seem to care. The labor and image rights are also a major part of the story.
Besides, according to the article, Costello has been accused of shit like this before. I wouldn’t be so quick to say that the reporter decided to “invent the racist motivation”.
If my baby cousin gets hit trying to cross a busy street where many deaths have already occurred, I will still cry, even if the collision was entirely predictable. He didn’t deserve it. Knowing danger and accepting the risk does not mean you deserve the dire consequences when they occur.
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