Looks can be deceiving. Apparently. Yesterday, a new print ad for L’Oréal Paris’ Feria hair color surfaced, featuring a seemingly paler than usual Beyoncé Knowles. Today, the French cosmetics giant is adamantly denying that it gave its longtime spokeswoman a case of the Michael Jacksons. “Beyoncé Knowles has been a spokesperson for the L’Oréal Paris brand since 2001,” the company said in a statement to E! News, after coming under withering online attacks suggesting the ad (on right, above) lightened more than just the hair color of the brand’s famous face. “We highly value our relationship with Ms. Knowles. It is categorically untrue that L’Oréal Paris altered Ms. Knowles’ features or skin-tone in the campaign for Feria’s hair color.” A rep for the 27-year-old Knowles declined to comment beyond the L’Oréal statement. The ad is appearing in this month’s Elle. So far the magazine has not said anything about possible Pantone issues.

HMM. Well there is no question that Beyoncé looks much lighter in the Feria ad to me so the question becomes, why does her skin tone look so much lighter. It’s possible that the Elle magazine printing may be the cause of the lightening but I dunno if Elle is gonna wanna take on that responsibility. I sincerely hope that this lightening is just an error somewhere along the line and it wasn’t purposely decided by someone that it would be wise to make an African American woman look lighter just to sell more hair color. Tho, we may never get a either an admittance or a solid answer one way or the other.

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