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Kerry Washington is a beautiful woman. I feel like I need to say that because you are about to see some truly hideous pictures of her.
By late 2012 and early 2013 Scandal, Kerry's first TV show, was finally hitting its stride after initially struggling with some mediocre ratings. It was becoming a cultural phenomenon. Everyone loved Olivia Pope and her style and as a result fashion magazines wanted Kerry Washington on their covers.
So where did it all go wrong?
THE WORST OF THE WORST![]()
Jet October 2012 photographed by ???No, that's not a weird Kerry Washington wax figure. That's the real Kerry Washington bleached out and photoshopped so much she's fallen into the
uncanny valley. What makes this so much weirder is that Kerry had appeared on Jet covers before looking
noticeably darker (and more human). Jet has done their best to pretend this issue doesn't exist and when you go to their webpage the cover for this image is broken but the internet never forgets.
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Variety October 2013 photographed by ???To be fair, none of the women chosen to be on the cover of Variety's 2013 power of women issue looked good, but Kerry looked particularly bad. Why is so much of her face obscured? You're not working with Benedict Cumberbatch people!
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Glamour October 2013 photographed by Peggy SirotaIn 2013 Kerry appeared on Glamour for the first time and they began a loving tradition of making her look absolutely awful on the cover. The pose and setting is awkward enough (you can't really tell, but she's hunched over a seat on an airplane). The real damage though is the brightning of Kerry's skin and the over the top air brushing. If you look at her hair you can see the individual strands, but the rest of her has been smoothed out so that she's completely poreless and it only gets worse as your eye travels further down.
Emmy Magazine Issue N. 5 2013 photographed by Sarah McColganI don't even know what to say. What is even going on in the area around her cheekbone???? Emmy is a trade magazine that doesn't have a huge budget which may explain why the cover is so abysmal. What makes this all the more baffling is that
the photographs in the editorial, while not the greatest, actually look like her and would probably have made a better cover.
But really how do you take this:
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And turn it into that???
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Ebony March/April 2015 photographed by Christian HögstedtThe fun graphic print of the dress and the playful wig mean that this cover had the potential to be cool (
this photo from the editorial of Kerry in the same dress would have been a way better cover). Unfortunately, from straight on the proportions of the dress, combined with wig makes her head look unusually small. Her skin has been overly photoshopped so that it has a yellowy hue, but also they've erased her pores giving her a flat lifeless look.
https://instagram.com/p/7c1nD1ABiB
Essence October 2015 Issue photographed by Nino Muñoz Muñoz is an excellent photographer and Essence has had many decent covers featuring Washington before and after this so I'm not sure exactly what went wrong here. The actual result looks like a digital painting and it baffles me why whoever was in charge chose an unflattering photo of Washington with her mouth half open.
https://instagram.com/p/ysr7lngBtR
InStyle March 2015 Issue photographed by Jan Welters Kerry looks pretty on this cover, but the reason that it makes the worst list is the obvious skin lightening. In the version she posted on Instagram to promote the cover she tried to redarken herself a bit, but you can still tell they made her way lighter than she actually is (parts of her jaw and under arms are actually straight up white). The criticism was so bad that
InStyle was forced to issue a statement, claiming that it was the excessive lights that made Kerry's skin appear lighter despite the fact that in the photoshoot Kerry appeared to be a completely different shade. Sure. At least they didn't make the same mistake
the next time they had Kerry on their cover.![]()
Glamour Magazine May 2017 Issue photogaphed by Steven Pan I will give this cover credit for one thing. I believe it's the first time that Kerry appeared on a magazine cover without straightened hair. Unfortunately everything else about it is terrible. Ignoring the hideous layout of the text, the styling is awful. Her skin has also obviously been lightened. And the hunched over pose is unflattering. Again,
if you take a look at the editorial pictures, where Kerry looks relaxed and confident it's baffling that this is what the Glamour team chose for the cover.
https://instagram.com/p/BD1Yu--ABne
AdWeek April 2016 photographed by Alexei Hay Kerry has had a lot of shitty covers, but you know what? The woman is a pro, she always promotes them on social media, she always talks about how honoured she is to be on the cover. AdWeek finally broke her. I mean when the cover is so shitty that even the star hates it to the point where she is calling you out on social media you know you fucked up. When she promoted the cover she pointed out the frequent problem of crappy covers/pretty editorials and then said "It felt strange to look at a picture of myself that is so different from what I look like when I look in the mirror. It's an unfortunate feeling." YIKES!!! I don't blame her, the graphic pattern on pattern look is gorgeous, but Kerry herself is practically unrecognizable with weird half-closed eyes, hair styled like a mushroom cap, and a digitally shrunken forehead that make her look strange and not at all like herself.
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Lucky Magazine Dec. 2013/Jan. 2014 Issue photographed by Patrick Demarchelier LBR when we talk about bad Kerry Washington covers what we're really talking about is this. I still have no idea what happened here.They had to actively work to make her look this terrible. Not only has Kerry been photoshopped beyond recognition, she's been photoshopped to look ugly as hell. This is definitely the worst picture the Lucky team could have chosen for the cover, but unlike other photoshoots, even the inside editorial pictures were awful.
It's all the more bizarre since Demarchelier is a great photographer (one of my favourites!) Some people attributed the problem to the Lucky team and Demarchelier not knowing how to photograph a black woman. But Demarchelier has photographed many black women (including Janet Jackson, Beyoncé, Zoe Kravitz, Naomi Campbell and Lupita Nyong'o) both before this cover and after and they looked stunning.
Kerry bravely consented to being photographed by him again in 2015. It's not among her greatest covers, but
at least the result looks more like her.
Palate cleanser in case you forgot what Kerry actually looks like:![]()
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THE BEST OF THE BESThttps://instagram.com/p/BKoCW4BhM5s
The Hollywood Reporter September 2016 photographed by Mary RozziThere's a lot to love about this cover of THR (which also features shoe designer
Christian Louboutin). Kerry's sitting down but she's also sitting upright in a way that makes her look strong and powerful as opposed to a lot of the crunched down "broken" poses that are favoured by fashion magazines and tend not to work for her. Most notable though is that this cover isn't actively trying to bleach out her skin. Kudos to photographer Rozzi for showing how much dimension, detail and colour it's possible to achieve without making Kerry look lighter.
https://instagram.com/p/BGXPQIkABtE
Variety June 2016 Issue photograhed by Bryce DuffyDuffy knocks it out of the park with this Kerry cover (ignore Aziz). Perhaps the oddest part of this cover is that Variety did a redcarpet/joint TV interview/photoshoot day and they still got a better picture of Kerry than most fashion magazines that plan for months on how to get the perfect picture. That explains why Kerry's wearing a great dress that she and her team chose and perhaps explains the confident open-mouthed smile (seriously why don't more magazines let her smile this way instead of the close-mouth smirk?
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Women's Wear Daily January 2016 photographed by Art StreiberLooking back at a lot of the worst covers I often wonder why they do a lot of full body and three quarter length shots of Kerry instead of just doing a simple headshot. This photograph by Streiber shows how easy it would be to have a great Kerry cover just by photographing her face. Sure she's airbrushed but it's enhancing her looks instead of redesigning her face completely.
Streiber also called her "fantastic in front of the camera".
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The Edit May 2017 photographed by Kerry Hallihan In the same way that Glamour manages to get Kerry consistently wrong, The Edit always seems to get her right. Photographed by Kerry Hallihan she has a clean fresh face that hasn't gone overboard with the airbrushing.
https://instagram.com/p/0s6IEcOUWh
The Edit March 2014 photographed by Bjorn Iooss If When Vogue finally gives Kerry a cover they need to hire Iooss to do the shoot. He called her "stunning" and that's exactly how he made her look. Unfortunately Washington has still been lightened but there's a huge difference between this and the bad covers. Kerry's undertone remains brown instead of taking on the rusty hue of a lot of the bad magazines, and instead of being one flat colour she's obviously been lit from several angles so that her face has dimension and shape.
source 123456789101112131415 + commentary by me
ONTD are you photogenic?
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