Makeup artist takes heat for turning white model black
An LA makeup artist who goes by Paintdatface recently came under fire for what many believe was a blatant case of blackface.
He recently posted a transformation picture to his Instagram, where he has 64,000 followers, of a blonde, blue-eyed woman transforming into a woman with dark hair, brown eyes, and a much darker complexion.
He tried to get ahead of any criticism by posting a lengthy disclaimer that insisted he was not using blackface in the pictures, but the internet came for him anyway, pointing out that just because he said something was not blackface didn’t make it true.
“This is a transformation that I’ve been holding back from releasing for a while now, solely because of the fear I’ve had of people turning it into a racial scandal against me,” Paintdatface wrote on the image. “THIS IS NOT ABOUT A RACE CHANGE. This is about one woman acknowledging, embracing, and celebrating the beauty of another woman’s culture.”
However, Paintdatface eventually removed the offensive image and posted again, this time saying that he hadn’t deleted it because he was sorry or regretted his decision but because he was sick of the criticism.
“The transformation that I recently posted of a woman transformed into a woman of another culture has been highly criticized by those who don’t understand the message. I deleted the post, not because I had regret or saw wrongdoing, but because of the negativity social media turned it into,” he wrote.
“It’s been assumed by most that my intentions were to transform my model into a black woman. ‘Truth is, my intentions were to keep the look vague enough to be relatable to many women of different cultures, but the true inspiration of the overall look came from my Cuban heritage.”
