plays a part definitely,if you ask most congolese to show you 5 beautiful women without thinking much,most will refer to aliya,amida,magic wawina,the pembe sisters(that one who was with abed achour and co),mainly light skinned/mixed ones
then like i said the fact that aliya was built like a myth by koffi while she did exactly what cindy gets bad mouthed for,however though i have a strong feeling that if it was barbara kanam for example instead it would be a bit more accepted despite not being light skinned,because barbara was already "completely polished and refined" people never got to see her go from rags to riches while with cindy a lot of people cant get over the image of the cindy of group wassa and her session work with that major glow up later