Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder — but only if you’re paying at least a little bit of attention. On Sunday, Total Beauty magazine tweeted a photo of Whoopi Goldberg as she arrived at the Oscars red carpet. The only problem? The mag mistakenly called her Oprah Winfrey.
In the pic, Goldberg is seen posing in an elegant, off-the-shoulder black dress that showcased a sizable tattoo sprawled across her right shoulder. They captioned the snap, “We had no idea @Oprah was #tatted, and we love it. #Oscars.”
Roughly 40 minutes went by before someone at the magazine realized the error and took it down — but the damage was already done. Twitter users, both famous and not, skewered the publication for its egregious error, and the hashtag #ThatsNotOprah was soon trending.
“Oprah had no idea she was Whoopi Goldberg either,” wrote comedian Travon Free, while others posted pics of white celebrities that were intentionally mislabeled.
For her part, however, Oprah took it in stride, and let her BFF handle it for her. Gayle King posted a pic of her daughter, Kirby Bumpus, curled up on a couch alongside Oprah, both of their mouths open in shock as Winfrey flashes the offending tweet on her phone.
“@Oprah & favorite daughter watching #Oscars & seeing @totalbeautyeditors snafu!” she exclaimed. “We all love @whoopigoldberg but we don’t all look alike Jeeeze!”
Several hours after the original post, Total Beauty tweeted a groveling follow-up message. “We’d like to apologize to Oprah and Whoopi, as well as everyone we’ve offended,” they shared. “It was our error, and there are no excuses. We’re sorry.”
But the publication’s damage control continued into the wee hours of the morning, as it posted yet another tweet at approximately 1 a.m. PT trying (hard!) to make things right. “Using this #Oscars #SNAFU as an opportunity to donate $10k to @whoopigoldberg & @oprah’s charity of choice. #ThatsNotOprah #WeMeanIt.”
It was particularly bad timing for such a gaffe, considering the raging controversy over the lack of black nominees this year. In fact, a huge portion of Chris Rock’s opening monologue and subsequent comedy bits focused on the issue. Among other jabs, the host referred to the Oscars as the “White People’s Choice Awards” and argued that there has been a lack of diversity since “day one.”
