Lupita N'yongo is someone who has been commodified by the media. She has allowed the French media, namely Vogue and Lancôme, to mediate her dark skin as some racialized conceptualism. Both ad campaigns have visually defined the terms of her "blackness" by substantially lightening her skin tone in their ads. Although she is a Yale graduate, a film writer and producer, as well as an advocate for the humanitarian situation in Africa; her beauty is reduced to the superficial presence of her blackness and African-ness. After the necessary changes, some high-couture designers flocked to do something avant-garde; not something timeless. They wanted their design on the metaphorical "new car" before everyone else had the chance to wrap her form.
The lightening of Lupita's skin tone in the visual ads stabilizes racialization and destabilizes diversity; it echoes an age-old preference for people who engage in some version of race performance: She did not have to agree to this photo shoot, knowing the history of these companies. Throwing all of that aside and marketing herself as some pan-African, remarkably rare, yet acceptable version of blackness; N'yongo is now fit to define, valuate and commercialize the U.S.-African market. Her breakthrough role was that of a commodified, racialized person: A black slave woman.
Even though she is quoted to have said "she felt she had to play the role", that in itself is very interesting...
