Photo via Instagram/shudu.gram
Why book a Black model, when you can create one, right? Wrong. A London-based digital artist, Cameron-James Wilson created a fake black model whom he calls “Shudu” and has gained more than 47,000 Instagram followers on “her” account.
With the use of 3D imaging, Wilson created the dark-skinned model and built an Instagram feed of professional-looking, model photos featuring her dark skin and highlighting her strong facial features. The digitally-made model’s following skyrocketed after a picture of her wearing Rihanna‘s Fenty Beauty lipstick was reposted by the makeup line and went viral.
“Basically Shudu is my creation, she’s my art piece…” Wilson told Refinery 29. “She is not a real model, unfortunately, but she represents a lot of the real models of today. There’s a big kind of movement with dark skin models, so she represents them and is inspired by them.”
Wilson missed the mark with this one, and Twitter is definitely not here for it.
As rare as it is to regularly see dark-skin women in modeling ads, creating a digital model certainly does not help. Black skin is not a toy to be played with or a tool to capitalize off of. Though the creation is beautiful, capitalizing off of Black women without paying them is not.
