Fans Are Unfollowing Adele After Her Controversial Bikini Post

To be honest, I’m not sure anyone had “Adele gets canceled” on their 2020 Bingo card…

But then again, this is 2020 and I guess that means anything can and will happen.

Adele took to Instagram again over the weekend, and not in the fun way that she’s been posing lately…

You may remember her sharing her weight loss success earlier this year on Instagram…

instagram

And the support she shared for Beyonce’s “Black Is King…”

instagram

Now, there are a lot of celebrities who are accused of cultural appropriation, to the point where they’re pretty much reviled amongst certain communities (coughTheKardashianscough), but this Adele controversy came so out of left field that people seem more confused and sad than really enraged.

To celebrate Notting Hill Carnival, an event celebrating the Caribbean diaspora of the area, Adele posted a picture of herself in a Jamaican flag bikini and wearing Bantu knots, a traditional Jamaican hairstyle. Maybe it shouldn’t need to be said, but just in case, Bantu knots were created by and worn by Black women.

A white woman just popping them on her head is gonna cause some issues. You gotta see that coming.

Considering the frequent societal discussion of what cultural appropriation means and how it harms the cultures having their styles and ideas ripped off by white people, it’s pretty shocking that Adele would dress like this. Even more shocking that she would post it on main. She even looks uncomfortable! While there was definitely anger expressed online, a lot of people were just completely baffled by this choice:


Even more people were sure it was Katy Perry, who has quite a history of cultural appropriation herself, so the look fits:

There definitely were people who were genuinely pissed off though, and the conversation began to grow as people argued about what it means to appropriate culture, whether it’s for anyone but Jamaicans to say if this is okay, if the conversations we have about the issue in the U.S. is different from in the U.K. and on and on:

Adele clearly didn’t know what she was going to set off when she posted that picture. The fact that she even did makes me think she never looks at social media at all and probably has a team who manages all her accounts and then reports back. I bet they told her it was a hit!

More celebrity scandals: