RIP coloured skin? Twitter condemns Cosmopolitan magazine over alleged racist listicle

Beauty and lifestyle magazine Cosmopolitan added a listicle on their website earlier this week titled ‘21 Beauty Trends that Need to Die in 2015’. In it, they categorized the bad trends under “RIP” and the good trends under “Hello, Gorgeous!” [caption id=“attachment_2184663” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  One of the many reference images cosmopolitan magazine used. Image from Twitter: @KillioussBey[/caption] The listicle has been heavily criticised on Twitter, and the hashtag #BoycottCosmopolitan was trending was a while. The reason for this criticism was an error on the magazine’s part, where they used many images of coloured women for the RIP section, but took images of only white women in the Hello Gorgeous section. Obviously, it came across as racist. The article was first published in January, but came back into the limelight after it was reposted a couple of days ago, according to this Indian Express report. Most social media patrons felt that these reference images portrayed white supremacy heavily, while making a statement that white girls were better than coloured ones. The uproar led to Cosmopolitan issuing an editor’s note in the beginning of the listicle, explaining their stance and apologising for any offense. It said: " This article focuses on beauty trends with images that represent those trends. Some images have been taken out of context, and we apologize for any offense. Celebrating all women is our mission, and we will continue to work hard to do that." They even changed all the images containing women of colour, but that didn’t stop the Twitterati from lashing out against the article:

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