Freida Pinto versus L'Oreal: Guilty of Skin Lightening?

Freida Pinto may not be L'Oreal's biggest fan after she sees how the make-up company doctored her new advertisement for the Colors Take Flight make-up line.

The Indian beauty who struck box office gold starring in the hit Slumdog Millionaire has been a spokes model for the company since 2009. But in the lastest ads, Pinto does not look like herself.

Of course this may just be our eyes playing tricks on us. But this is not the first time L'Oreal has been accused of lightening a photograph of Pinto. The first time it happened was back in 2009 when she first starting modeling for the French brand.

It also is not the first time L'Oreal has come under fire for over-Photoshopping.

In a recent Lancôme advertisement featuring Julia Roberts, L'Oreal Photoshopped the actress past the point of recognition. The UK's Advertising Standard's Authority demanded the ad be pulled from shelves and not appear in its current form again due to its misleading nature, according to an article from PC World.

According to the PC World article, neither the ASA nor Swinson were allowed to compare L'Oreal's final product with pre-production images of Julia Roberts due to a clause in Roberts' contract stating that no one can see unaltered photographs of the actress.

L'Oreal was also accused of whitewashing Beyonce's hair in a 2008 ad. In the shot, Beyonce's skin is lighter and her hair is almost a strawberry blonde. This ad sparked a lot of controversay at the time.

Scottish Liberal Democrats in the UK have been pushing for a ban against the use of airbrushing of photographs since 2009, according to The Guardian. They defend this stance with the claim that overly perfected and unrealistic images ultimately encourage false standards of beauty that harm and subjugate women. Jo Swinson, a Deputy Leader of the party, is a strong supporter of this prohibition. She claims there is a detrimental impact on women that comes from the continuous drip-feed of touched up images.

Many believe these falsified images have led to the escalation of plastic surgery procedures, eating disorders, and self-esteem issues amongst young women. An article from the US News & World Report website discusses the issue of negative body image, citing that one out of every 10 individuals partakes in behaviors such as bingeing, over-exercising, skipping meal, and laxative abuse to obtain the picture-perfect body.