After an immediate, irrational backlash over a version of the latest issue of ELLE magazine that deigned to only show “The Mindy Project” star Mindy Kaling from the clavicles up, Kaling herself responded by saying she very much liked the photo. That should have been the end of it. It wasn’t. Fans and critics alike continued to bash the magazine, insinuating that the magazine refused to use a full-body shot (as they did with “Girls” star Allison Williams) because Mindy Kaling’s figure doesn’t align with modern standards for physical beauty.

Kaling has had enough of it.

“Oh, I thought [the cover] was nice, I guess,” she said on Friday’s Late Show With David Letterman, adding: “but the implication was, ‘What, Elle, you can’t put her big, fat body on the magazine? Why? ‘Cause she’s just fat and gruesome? Why can’t we look at her beautiful fat body?’ And I was like, ‘Okay, people who are trying to defend me,’ I just feel like they’re kind of insulting me!”

Besides the tight shot, critics are also wringing their hands over the magazine’s decision to photograph Kaling in black and white, despite her being the only woman of color featured in the four different versions of the cover. All other actresses were white, photographed in color and shown from head to toe.

“I didn’t expect this reaction,” Kaling said of the backlash. “The shot is of me is like this [she framed her face with her hands], showing my face. There was a weird reaction, which was, ‘Does Elle magazine think Mindy’s not skinny enough to show her whole body, standing up from head to toe?'”

Maybe the didn’t, or maybe the magazine simply made an artistic decision that happened to be incredibly coincidental. Critics were, and still are, quick to point to the former. Even though Kaling has attempted to “call off the dogs,” so to speak, some critics don’t take her endorsement of the cover as a sign that all is right with the world.

In an email to the Washington post, Angela Burt-Murray, who was editor-in-chief of Essence magazine from 2005 to 2010 says “The fact that Mindy likes the cover is nice, but that doesn’t mean others can’t have their say.”

A self-proclaimed size 8, Kaling has always been open about her figure and considers landing the cover of ELLE a milestone in her career.

“So I was, for the first time in my career, on the cover of a fashion magazine, which is such an awesome, nice thing…It felt great! I saw the cover, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I thought, ‘I look so, like, beautiful,’ and I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve never looked better. I feel like I look like a movie star on it!'”