Freida Pinto’s fair skin in an advertisement for a beauty giant has caused furore online, as the makers are being accused of digitally lightening the 27-year-old actor’s dusky skin tone. Pinto, who appears in an ad for makeup brand L’Oreal’s latest campaign, looks visibly fairer in the

commercial. The ad has re-sparked criticism about beauty businesses’ fixation with fair skin, and watchers wonder whether the effect has been deliberately induced by extra lighting, or by Photoshop. So much so, that Huffington Post has even started an online poll on whether the ad-makers have lightened her face or not. Fifty one per cent respondents agree that her face has been brushed up. “Her skin does look on the lighter side, but is it just the lighting? Or Photoshop?” asks the paper.

“Do you think L’Oreal needs to stop whitewashing its stars?” asks a gossip blogger, Oh No They Didn’t. “Why can’t we realise that these beautiful ladies are perfectly gorgeous the way they are?” says a user named Mary. “If they wanted a white model, they should’ve just used one,” says Sareelove.

Incidentally, the beauty brand has been accused of similar brush-ups earlier too. In 2008, they came under fire for a campaign which featured singer Beyonce. In 2009, when they announced Pinto as their brand ambassador, the image used was also accused of being lightened. However, the brand has issued a statement saying the allegations are categorically untrue.