Crystal Renn Gets Her Eyes Stretched For Japanese Vogue (VIDEO, POLL)

It's generally a bad idea to physically mimic a race or ethnicity that is not your own.

This is obvious every time a magazine paints another white model with dark brown face paint and the media cries "blackface" and gets all in a tizzy. Whether you think it is right or wrong, it is undoubtedly a bad PR move.

But Anna Dello Russo is not someone who cares what people think of her. So she went ahead and styled Crystal Renn for Vogue Nippon (that's Japanese Vogue) as Asian by stretching out her eyes and taping them back with scotch tape.

It is not known who told ADR, Vogue Nippon's editor-at-large, that this was a good idea.

The decision to make Renn over with more Asian-looking eyes is curious given that nothing else about that shoot is Asian-themed (as opposed to, say, a heavy-handed Chinese editorial complete with panda bears).

Are the eyes just a cheeky addition? Are they meant to cater to the Vogue Nippon audience? It's not exactly clear why they were necessary -- then again, it's also not clear that there's anything wrong with a little cosmetic eye-stretching.

Watch the behind-the-scenes video below and go to Dello Russo's blog to see the pictures -- do the eyes strike you as problematic?

Quick Poll

What do you think of Crystal Renn's faux-Asian eyes?

Racist and inappropriate -- when will fashion editors learn?

Simply playful and fun -- why make such a big deal?

Share your vote on Facebook so your friends can take this poll

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Comments

[Utada]

10:18 PM on 10/01/2011

I love how the people who say "this is just fashion" or "it doesn't seem offensive" and such aren't even Japanese, let alone Asian!! Speak for your own ethnicity! You're not Asian, so you don't have a clue as to what your'e talking about. And darn right, this is an offensive photo shoot!

[thinkingwomanmillstone]

10:56 AM on 09/06/2011

They truly need another voting choice. What about silly, pretentious, or overdone?

[Colleen Myers]

10:42 AM on 09/05/2011

To me she looks more like a character out of Star Trek, than Asian.

[awcooter]

10:01 AM on 09/06/2011

Ditto

[Cynth]

12:56 AM on 09/05/2011

This is an interesting concept, since many Asians (although not as many Japanese women as Chinese women) choose to go under the knife to have less Asian-looking eyes. I like the idea of having a white model whose eyes have been made to look more Asian for an Asian audience. I only wish that it's for Vogue China, where the "message" might have more impact. Dello Russo usually comes off whacky; but, this time, there is interesting symbolism, whether or not she intended for this to be symbolic.

[Charra]

07:57 PM on 09/27/2011

It's fashion. Everything is stylized, why not the eyes? And what you say about some Asian women favoring Caucasian eyefold is true, when I lived in Hawaii many years ago, a lot of the young Asian women there cut semi-circles of Scotch Magic Tape and slapped them above their eyes to create what they called "double eyelid."

[Dawn Castle]

11:09 AM on 09/04/2011

well, the judges are the japanese and whether or not they are offended.will they buy the mag. actually, this is an old hollywood trick. the model is great and beautiful. you can tell she enjoys what she does. I'm not a dolce and gabbana fan by any means, I don't usually like their style but this stuff was great.

[NINA B]

06:25 PM on 09/03/2011

What kind of dog is that? The model is very cute despite the silly makeup and outfits.

[bulldoom]

07:37 PM on 09/02/2011

Looks like a doof.

[mvmacd]

06:49 PM on 09/02/2011

boy george did it better

[Cynth]

12:58 AM on 09/05/2011

LOL!

[allerleirauh]

06:36 PM on 09/02/2011

Honestly if I had seen the photos without knowing she had her eyes taped, I wouldn't have known anything was special about her. I can see that the idea is offensive, particularly to Asians who have been teased by people pulling their eyes back in this way, but in practice she just looks like an 80's refugee.

[Cynth]

12:59 AM on 09/05/2011

Or an overly-made up EuroAsian woman.

[Cynth]

01:27 AM on 09/05/2011

"Eur-Asian"

[csing]

06:07 PM on 09/02/2011

Terrible idea! One should never stretch the delicate eye area! Wait till she hits 40, she will need an eye job!

[musikhut]

05:10 PM on 09/02/2011

Oh my, the PC police are bored today!

[gloriaswanson43]

04:16 PM on 09/02/2011

The model has gorgeous legs. She looks cute in the black and white outfit with the hat.

[Anne Marie313]

04:05 PM on 09/02/2011

I don't think that people that are offended by this really understand what racism is. If the article was created to make comical mockery that would be the only case where it would be construed as racism. This is a serious fashion shoot not a comical Mad Magazine parody.

[BiggpussJr]

03:41 PM on 09/02/2011

Offensive to who? slanty eyed white women? All of this so called "political correctness" has to stop!!!! Whatever happened to jokes?

[riverlee34]

01:39 PM on 09/02/2011

It doesn't even look chinese. If anything she looks like Spock from Star Trek.

[Cynth]

01:29 AM on 09/05/2011

Good observation. Gene Roddenberry did model Spock's look after Asians... :-)