'Unflattering' Beyonce photos: singer's PR asks for removal

BEYONCE'S half-time performance at the Super Bowl "wowed millions" on Sunday. But her publicist says some of the photographs taken at the event are so "unflattering" she wants them removed from the internet.

Gawker reports that the news and entertainment website Buzzfeed put together a gallery of pictures of Beyonce performing in New Orleans under the headline: "The 33 fiercest moments from Beyonce's show". The tone was adulatory, with captions praising the singer's "fierceness" - her confident, powerful attitude - and the way she entered the stadium "in all her glory".

But Beyonce's publicist was unimpressed. She sent a letter to Buzzfeed yesterday asking it to remove at least six of the pictures (one of them is featured above) she deemed unflattering. "We are respectfully asking you to change," the publicist wrote. "I am certain that you will be able to find some better photos."

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Gawker says the letter suggests that Beyonce's publicist "doesn't understand her client" because all photographs of the singer are great regardless of her posture or facial expression. "According to the Third Immutable Natural Law Of Beyoncé, there is no better photo of Beyoncé than the photo of Beyoncé you are viewing, because at that moment, it is the best of all possible Beyoncé photos," it writes. "This is one of the great Mysteries of Beyoncé."

On a more serious note, Gawker points out that there have been claims that rapper Kanye West's publicists tried recently to force the picture agency Getty Images to remove from its website photographs of the performer wearing a leather skirt at a benefit concert in New York.

"Kanye was successful - as far as we can tell, you can't buy a photo of the rapper in a skirt, anywhere," says Gawker. But the 'unflattering' pictures of Beyonce were still looking "fierce" on the Buzzfeed and Getty websites at the time of posting.