Beyoncé, one of the most high-profile black women in the world, was recently asked to take part in a photo shoot celebrating the "African Queen", for the French publication L'Officiel. You'd imagine she would have been wary. For one thing, the fashion industry is still regularly accused of whitewashing. For another, French outlets are notorious for their inability to move past racial stereotypes – take the example of the French press questioning whether its team messed up the 2010 World Cup because it had too many black players.

Beyoncé would, perhaps, have sought to avoid the caricaturing of African culture into tribal prints, facepaint and black skin so beloved by the fashion industry. She would have contemplated the need to reconcile her usual appearance – long bleached blonde extensions and ever paler skin – with the fact that she also sees herself as an appropriate symbol of African pride. The fruits of this soul-searching would have been manifest in both the shoot and interviews that followed.

Now, I love Beyoncé, but when it comes to introspection she is capable of disappointing on a massive scale. Previous judgment lapses range from the decision of Destiny's Child, her former group, to endorse George Bush in the 2000 presidential election (not, apparently, on the basis of their shared political views but because he, like Destiny's Child, was from Texas), to her performances for Gaddafi's family, to her lucrative advertising contract as the much, much whiter-than-her-natural skin colour face of L'Oreal. Beyoncé also has form when it comes to blackface. In "Listen", the hugely popular song from the Dreamgirls film, she is filmed blacked-up and adorned with more fancy-dress "African" accessories.

In light of all this, her latest photo shoot is perhaps not surprising. She has fallen into all the most predictable traps. Blackface? Check. Facepaint? Check. (We are helpfully educated on the authenticity of this by L'Officiel in a patronising statement which says "as for the artistic makeup, the inspiration came from several African rituals during which paint is used on the face. We find the images beautiful and inspiring.")

Good for you. Many Africans find their rituals beautiful and inspiring too, that is not the point. The point is that black people are for the most part unrepresented by the fashion industry, apart from when it decides to have a dalliance with Africa, following which we are subjected to a view of the world where Africans are people with one skin colour (dark) and one way of dressing (bright, exotic, tribal).

The further point is that Beyoncé – who many black people the world over embrace as one of their own – has shown an irrefutable tendency to develop continuously whiter skin. This is not, in my view, an attempt to reject the fact that she is black. It simply reflects a deeper and more alarming trend in global culture which requires mainstream female icons to be of indeterminate ethnic origin. Black women must be pale, slim but curvy, and have European features and have long straight hair. White women must be tanned, slim but curvy, and have long straight hair. There is no better example of this than Beautiful Liar, the video of Beyoncé and Shakira together in which the two women – despite the fact one is African American and the other Colombian – are almost indistinguishable from one another.

This trend is far bigger than any individual star – and to this extent I attribute only limited blame to Beyoncé herself for falling into the trap of becoming more ethnically ambiguous in her appearance. She is now a global, commercial brand; the look she has developed sells. For her this look is not antithetical to the African inspiration in her music and dancing, which is an inextricable part of her genre – black American music – and her individual style as an artist. But blacking herself up in the image of an "African Queen" as seen by French fashionistas? She really should know better.