There’s been a bunch of internet uproar (which to be fair translates to a low hum) over Gabourey Sidibe’s Elle cover. The magazine’s 25th-anniversary October issue features 25 women in their 20s who are really goin’ for it! Sidibe, Megan Fox, Lauren Conrad, and Amanda Seyfried get separate covers, and Gabby’s is the only one that’s framed close-up. People can’t handle it! Among the criticisms: She should do the same pose as everyone else. Her skin seems lighter. Her weave is bad. Sidibe’s inclusion “feels like a weird fetishization that borders on patronizing,” says Salon. 
 
 I don’t see what the problem is here. Elle picked Gabourey Sidibe as a game-changer, so she is on one of the covers. Would people be less upset if Elle had put each of these four women into the same tiny dress and asked “Who’s wearin’ it best?” They constructed the Sidibe cover in a specific way so that she would look her best, and she looks beautiful. Is it really so jarring to see someone heavy on a magazine cover that people need to freak out over how it “should look” instead? This is how it looks. 
 
 “We have four separate covers this month, and Gabby’s cover was not retouched any more or less than the others,” said Elle in a statement. “We had 25 cover-worthy subjects in our portfolio and we chose Gabby because of who she is….We shot this as a story of exuberant young women changing the world. If you take a look at the portfolio, each of the women were shot in different ways and for different reasons.” 
 
 Fair enough? 
 
 Annie on Twitter: @EWAnnieBarrett ||||| Airbrushing Controversy Surrounds Gabourey Sidibe Elle Cover 
 
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 Elle magazine is denying accusations that it digitally lightened the skin of Oscar-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe, who is appearing on one of the October issue's four celebrity covers. 
 
 
 
 The controversy is the second magazine swirl Sidibe's name has been tied to in 2010. It was back in February that there was an outcry that the actress, at the time reveling in the Oscar buzz around 'Precious, had been left off of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The 'Precious' actress appears on the cover in a draped emerald green gown and rocking long, straight locks, though her glowing skin does seem to be a few shades lighter than normal (See the photos above). 
 
 
 
 So is the lighter skin a result of her makeup or the lighting used on set? Or did somebody get too eager with the Photoshop? 
 
 
 
 Elle reportedly claims "nothing out of the ordinary" was done. Elle magazine is denying accusations that it digitally lightened the skin of Oscar-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe, who is appearing on one of the October issue's four celebrity covers.The controversy is the second magazine swirl Sidibe's name has been tied to in 2010. It was back in February that there was an outcry that the actress, at the time reveling in the Oscar buzz around 'Precious, had been left off of Vanity Fair's Hollywood cover in what some called 'The White Issue. The Telegraph reports that the fashion magazine -- which last month featured Julia Roberts on its front -- is also being criticized for showing slim October cover girls Megan Fox Amanda Seyfried , and Lauren Conrad in full-length poses, while the plus-size Sidibe is only seen from the chest up, according to the paper.The 'Precious' actress appears on the cover in a draped emerald green gown and rocking long, straight locks, though her glowing skin does seem to be a few shades lighter than normal (See the photos above).So is the lighter skin a result of her makeup or the lighting used on set? Or did somebody get too eager with the Photoshop?Elle reportedly claims "nothing out of the ordinary" was done. 
 
 http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNodes=uiConfig,feedConfig,entry&id=681836&pid=681835&uts=1273243810 http://www.popeater.com/mm_track/popeater/movies/?s_channel=us.moviespop&s_account=aolpopeater,aolsvc&omni=1&ke=1 http://cdn.channel.aol.com/cs_feed_v1_6/csfeedwrapper.swf Hit or Miss Fashion? Christina Aguilera leaves her SoHo hotel looking very edgy, and possibly 'Evil,' as she heads to Radio City Music Hall. Bauer-Griffin Bauer-Griffin 
 
 "We have four separate covers this month, and Gabby's cover was not retouched any more or less than the others," the 25-year-old magazine said in an official statement."We had 25 cover-worthy subjects in our portfolio and we chose Gabby because of who she is."We shot this as a story of exuberant young women changing the world. If you take a look at the portfolio, each of the women were shot in different ways and for different reasons."Hmmm... "more or less than the others"? Sounds fishy.It's not the first time accusations of skin lightening have been made. In 2008, L'Oréal received complaints that it had allegedly lightened Beyoncé's skin in a Feria ad. ||||| Gabourey Sidibe has landed her first fashion magazine cover, kind of. The 25-year-old ingenue is the solo cover for the October issue of Elle magazine. Starting next month, you can pick up a copy of Elle with Sidibe flashing her pearly whites and glamming it up for the cameras in an emerald green Tadashi Shoji dress. 
 
 Except look closely, and you’ll notice there’s something off in Sidibe’s cover photo. Sidibe’s skin is noticeably lighter than usual. Elle clearly couldn’t handle Sidibe’s real skin color, and traded away her actual color for something dramatically lighter. 
 
 It’s a common, tired practice, and the routine is well-practiced: beauty companies and fashion magazines regularly lighten women’s skin (and darken the faces of black men), pissed off consumers shout back, and sometimes an apology is issued. But come the next fall collection or election season, photo retouchers are inevitably back to trying to make women of color more attractive by lightening them, and darkening the skin of men of color to make them seem more dangerous and suspect. Color, still, is everything. 
 
 And that’s just one thing Elle got wrong with its Sidibe cover. By cropping Sidibe’s cover photo so close, Elle may have been trying to hide her full-figured body—its own travesty—but they only made her seem bigger. Sidibe doesn’t get the standard female cover photo treatment: three-quarters of the woman’s body centered with strong margins of white space on either side of the woman. She gets a uniquely awkward cropped shot. 
 
 And I’ll just say what I know you’re thinking: the weave Elle gave her is not doing Sidibe any favors. It’s the kind of unflattering and embarrassingly obvious weave that a fashion magazine should be ashamed to put on anyone. (And Elle’s done it to Beyonce in the past, too.) 
 
 Landing a cover is a big deal for any star, more so for Sidibe, whose skin color and wise-cracking smarts and body type make her something of an obvious outsider in Hollywood. Sidibe’s also been famously snubbed by fashion magazines. She was reportedly passed over by Vogue, because she was too big. And in March, Sidibe was left off a Vanity Fair cover of nine young actresses for the magazine’s “Young Hollywood 2010!” spread. The women who made the cut were, you guessed it, all white. 
 
 At the time, Access Hollywood asked her about how it felt to be sidelined in favor of five nearly identical pale white female actresses. Sidibe, with her characteristically tough mettle, shrugged it off: 
 
 “Was I satisfied? Yeah, well… I mean, I come from a world where I’m not on covers and I’m not in magazines at all,” Gabourey said. “And so I was happy to be in the magazine. “At first I thought, ‘Hmm, should I be there?” she continued, about the cover shoot. “Then I very quickly got over it. I think if I were a part of that shoot I would have felt a little left out anyway.” 
 
 And judging from October’s Elle, it may have been just as well that Sidibe was left off the Vanity Fair cover. The fashion industry clearly gets flummoxed by any woman whose body and skin color are outside American society’s narrow definitions of beauty. In 2007, Vogue also ran an unflattering photo of Jennifer Hudson when they gave her a cover. It’s illustrative of all the ways that when it comes to full-figured women of color, landing a fashion magazine cover isn’t always a compliment. Too bad for the fashion industry; it pays time and again for its racial faux pas with ridicule from the rest of the world. But unfortunately for us, fashion magazines don’t operate in a vacuum. If only the fashion and beauty industries were not a reflection of our culture and our society, our own ignorance. It’d be so much easier to make fun of. 
 
 
 
 
 
 h/t Womanist Musings
– Precious star Gabourey Sidibe is on the new cover of Elle, and her image has set off a tiff in the blogosphere on whether the magazine used digital retouching to "whiten" her. Here's Julianne Hing at ColorLines: "Elle clearly couldn’t handle Sidibe’s real skin color, and traded away her actual color for something dramatically lighter." (See PopEater for comparison photos.) The magazine is also taking criticism for posing her differently than other models (more of a face closeup than a body shot) in an apparent attempt to play down her weight. Elle says this is all crazy: "We have four separate covers this month, and Gabby's cover was not retouched any more or less than the others. ... If you take a look at the portfolio, each of the women were shot in different ways and for different reasons." At Entertainment Weekly, Annie Barrett thinks the criticism is overblown. Elle's explanation on retouching is sound. On the other point, "they constructed the Sidibe cover in a specific way so that she would look her best, and she looks beautiful. Is it really so jarring to see someone heavy on a magazine cover that people need to freak out over how it 'should look' instead? This is how it looks." For other retouching scandals, click here.