After our big Golden Globes blow-out, we’re still playing catch-up on some of the stories that fell through the cracks late last week, which is why I’m only getting to this Mindy Kaling follow-up now. As we discussed a week ago, Mindy got one of four ELLE covers devoted to the ladies of TV – the other covers were Allison Williams, Amy Poehler and Zooey Deschanel. Zooey, Amy and Allison’s covers were all in color and they were photographed from the mid-thigh up. Mindy’s cover was in black-and-white and it was only a headshot. Some people thought that it was racist and sizeist of ELLE to make Mindy’s cover so different, like a notably “separate and unequal” cover for average-sized women of color. But! ELLE fought back and basically said that Mindy’s cover is awesome and Mindy came out and said she liked the cover too. Then she appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman to discuss it:

Apparently everyone except Mindy Kaling was upset by her Elle cover. The Mindy Project star appeared The Late Show with David Letterman Thursday, Jan. 9, and defended her new magazine photo against her so-called supporters.

“I was for the first time on the cover of a fashion magazine, which is such an awesome, nice thing,” Kaling, 34, told host David Letterman of the controversy. “I saw the cover . . . I thought I look so beautiful. I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve never looked better.’ I feel like I look like a movie star on it.”

Those feelings, however, were not shared by her fans and Elle magazine readers.

“There was a weird reaction which was, ‘Does Elle magazine think Mindy’s not skinny enough to show her whole body like standing up from head to toe?'” Kaling explained. “The sort of implication, what they kept saying was like, ‘What Elle, you can’t put her big fat body on the magazine? Why because she’s just fat and gruesome? Why shouldn’t we look at her beautiful fat body?'”

“And I was like, ‘Okay, people who are trying to defend me,'” the actress quipped. “I just feel like they’re kind of insulting me!”

Kaling was one of four women featured on the cover of Elle’s “Women in TV issue.” Her cover photo, however, was the only headshot rather than almost-full body image used. But the Office alum said she couldn’t be more pleased with how her cover turned out.

“It’s black and white. It looks like I died at my most beautiful,” she joked. “It looks like this is a dead person that they’re like, ‘How could we have taken her away at so young. If only a million dollars for another second with this . . .”

[From Us Weekly]

Well, Mindy, that’s not what we were saying. And you know better, Mindy! No one thinks you’re “fat and gruesome”. We think you are average-sized, like the overwhelming majority of women who are not size-zero-perfect on every other magazine cover. I mean, I understand that this is a difficult subject to discuss when it’s YOUR body being analyzed and fought over (and honestly, we shouldn’t put the weight of this discussion on Mindy), but speaking as someone who was slightly insulted by the ELLE covers, it felt like just another reminder that magazines don’t want to put women that look like ME on their covers, and that dark-skinned women are still fetishized and otherized and made “separate” from the white women.

Here are some photos of Mindy at yesterday’s “Fox All-Star Winter TCA Party” in Pasadena. I think this event was just like the Fox Upfronts – Fox stars met with media outlets, etc. I like Mindy’s dress and she looks super.

Photos courtesy of WENN, ELLE.