This was the cover that raised the storm as someone was stepping out of the shadows & you can see there are more than two black models. 
Now this is new cover & the new tagline reads something like this: I want to emerge with my own name...it seems they neither worked on the new cover nor did they have time for the caption I guess. It's already March & Bela seems angry. The men’s magazine FHM Philippines had to pull down the cover of its March issue. There were accusations that it was an extremely racist cover.
It was shown as a teaser on the FHM website on Saturday, but people raised a storm as the cover featured light-skinned Bela Padilla standing in front of black models in black bikinis in the dim background. Across the bottom of the cover, it carried the caption, ‘Stepping Out of the Shadows.’ Naturally readers were pissed off. The magazine received lots of angry comments on FB & tweets. They are saying or presuming that most of the criticism was apparently from dark-skinned Filipinos.
In an interview with BBC News reporter Mishal Husain, Padilla responded to the backlash her FHM Philippines cover received.
“Honestly, some of those girls were actually Filipinas painted in black, not to represent Africans, but we were really doing that to portray shadows because, like I said, it’s my coming of age. And we weren’t thinking of harming anyone, and we weren’t thinking of racial discrimination,” she said.
Husain questioned Padilla's response, saying, “Some people might think that it’s even more offensive that some people in that shoot were Filipinas who were painted black.”
Yeah it’s dead wrong. It becomes all the more offensive when you get to know that women were painted black. But I think the cover wasn’t that bad. Does that make me a racist? :P
Anyhow, they took all the points into consideration & now it’s going to be a different cover, which is just okay.
“We deem this to be the most prudent move in the light of the confusion over the previous cover execution. We apologize and thank those who have raised their points,” FHM said in a statement on its Philippine website.
“When FHM hits the stands in March it will have a different cover,” it added, but it’s going to feature the same actress, Bela Padilla.
And how can we miss what angry readers posted on the website:
“Seriously, did you guys not sense how racist this concept was?” wrote a film student on the Facebook page of FHM Philippines.
“That some people including the editors did not find an issue with that ignorant FHM magazine cover shows how deeply ingrained racism is in Philippine society,” a Filipino in the United States commented.
Another person commented on Twitter: “What do you expect??? Can you really expect some form of sensitivity from a magazine that prides itself in exploiting women for profit?”
I so totally agree with them but I still think that cover had something. Bela Padilla looked gorgeous. Now this new cover doesn’t have that thing & Bela doesn’t look that great. Maybe she needed those painted women. But I’m glad they have rectified their mistake. It seemed as if those women were depicted as slaves. This was not right. I won’t raise the question: How could they make such a ghastly mistake? Because I don’t even think it was a mistake. It was an idea that backfired. We can’t say people are not ready for it. I think people have had enough. But unfortunately discrimination is not dying. It’s still very much alive.
I’d like to bitch a little. In one of the dailies I read that there were just two black models. They ought to have a good look at the cover before reporting about it. I know it’s not that easy to know but nevertheless you’re being paid to see things properly.
