Continuing the resurgence of a makeup practice long considered taboo, "America's Next Top Model" featured a number of models painted with dark makeup to resemble bi-racial women.

On the episode, which aired tonight (Oct. 28), host Tyra Banks said the goal was to create an editorial celebration of the "Hapa" (that's Hawaiian for mixed-race) children of immigrants who relocated to Hawaii to work as sugar cane farmers in the mid-19th century. Barack Obama is the most famous Hapa.

Banks tasked models with interpreting exotic racial combinations like "Russian-Moroccan," "Native American-East Indian," and "Botswanan-Polynesian," photographing them herself in the green reeds of a sugar plantation on the island of Maui.

The models -- Jennifer An, Nicole Fox, Laura Kirkpatrick, Sundai Love, Brittany Markert and Erin Wagner -- were styled in clothing stereotypical to the ethnicities they were asked to portray. For example, Markert, who was "Native American-East Indian," was dressed in a feathered headdress and a sari. And Love, as a "Russian-Morrocan" was styled with Russian Ushanka hat and a large walking stick.

Then, the models were sent to makeup, where each was painted with varying degrees of dark body makeup to match the perceived skin tone of the corresponding race they were conveying.

This is the second time models have been shown in dark makeup in recent weeks.
French Vogue photographed model Lara Stone in blackface for its October issue, which was particularly disturbing because the offending pictures were part of an issue celebrating models, but had nary a black model in the magazine.

Instead, they chose to paint a blonde model black in a botched attempt to squeeze out a drop of artistic diversity.

Currently, out of "America's Next Top Model's" six remaining contestants, one is black, one is Asian and four are Caucasian. The show started out with four black models in a group of 14.

We asked experts to weigh in on the issue. Here's what they had to say:

Susan Stiffelman, Marriage and Family therapist and author of Parenting Without Power Struggles: "While the images shown on 'America's Top Model' were interesting and compelling, our culture is still quite young in terms of its ethnic maturity. Promoting women of color in traditional -- stereotypical -- attire and settings may have been motivated by a desire to celebrate diversity, but the photo shoot runs the risk of perpetuating stereotypes that women have long been working to dismantle.

"It's especially important to consider the effect on young women (the show's primary viewers) of having Caucasian models made up to simulate women of color, rather than having -- well, women of color being celebrated for their beauty. It could be considered a rather significant throwback to a time when people of African descent were excluded from mainstream theater and the arts, with white actors and performers substituted, with blackface.