When Gawker balked at the prospect of skin-whitening creams in India, I shrugged -- lotions and potions to make ethnics of any pigment feel more Westernized have existed since time immemorial. But then you have head-scratching initiatives, such as the Russian media's attempts to make Beyoncé appear less urban. Not that country band Sugarland hadn't already succeeded to that end. But here we have two magazines. And while both fail to live up to their names, one of them fails quite epically.

There are probably grander questions at play here, such as what use does an austerely pragmatic country like Russia have for a huckster shilling freakum dresses and sweet dreams. But one quandary at a time! Please! Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Here we have a Russian magazine, Joy, whose art director found some inherent need to tinker with the brightness/contrast settings of whatever source image provided the cover shot in order to make her more palatable to the discerning magazine-buyers of Asia Minor. It's clear that Glamour probably overcompensated in the other direction. Although we've always been a little more forgiving with matters of reverse racism, because of laziness or liberal guilt. More curious is how few people are discussing that two Russian ladymags cannibalized the same dreadfully banal Beyoncé image?

For all her opportunistic Michael Jackson tributes, I suppose it makes sense that one of the late pop demigod's hits rings especially true for Beyoncé, as she finds herself at odds with herself.