Last Wednesday, Madame Tussauds New York announced they were putting a Beyoncé wax figure out on display through September. They made the announcement in a tweet that got almost no social interaction—as of this morning, it only had four likes and no retweets—which was probably because Madame Tussauds directed their tweet at Beyoncé:
A woman claiming to be a Madame Tussauds New York employee also confirmed that the Beyoncé wax figure was out on display in another tweet that featured several photos of the wax figure. It didn't get much social interaction, either:
But the Beyoncé wax figure is getting plenty of social interaction now thanks to a tweet sent out on Tuesday night by, oddly enough, a Ciara superfan. The fan, who uses the Twitter handle @CCFan007, shared an image of the Beyoncé wax figure along with the caption, "Beyoncé wax figure at @MadameTussauds is FIERCE!"
The tweet started making the rounds on Twitter almost immediately, because as you can see in all of the tweets above, Madame Tussauds New York’s Beyoncé wax figure looks, well, nothing like Beyoncé.
Lindsay Lohan? Maybe:
Jessica Simpson? We might buy that:
A mash-up of Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, and Hillary Duff? Sure, why not:
But Beyoncé? No. From the skin tone of the wax figure to the hair style to the face, people aren’t seeing it, and they’ve spent the last 12 hours or so sounding off on Madame Tussauds New York for allowing this wax figure to go out on display. Take a look at some of the responses that @CCFan007’s original tweet got:
Now, this wax figure is obviously not good. But we should point out that it actually is good when you compare it to some of the other Beyoncé wax figures that are out there in the world. For whatever reason, wax figure artists just can’t seem to nail down Beyoncé’s look, even though she’s obviously one of the most famous and successful women on the planet:
And all of this has been made even worse by the fact that Kylie Jenner just got her own wax figure at Madame Tussauds Hollywood, and unlike Beyoncé’s wax figure, it looks just like her:
That has also upset plenty of Beyoncé fans:
Madame Tussauds New York provided a statement to Complex on Wednesday afternoon regarding the controversy caused by Beyoncé's wax figure. In the statement, the company specifically addressed the questions surrounding the wax figure's skin tone. "At Madame Tussauds, our talented team of sculptors take every effort to ensure we accurately color match all of our wax figures to the celebrity being depicted," the statement said. "Lighting within the attraction combined with flash photography may distort and misrepresent the color of our wax figures which is something our sculptors are unable to account for at the production stage."
