Musician and chef Kelis shared a video on Instagram showing two women touching her braided hair without her consent while she visited Singapore.
Kelis, whose full name is Kelis Rogers-Mora, was sitting with a friend outdoors when the pair suddenly approached her.
In the “Milkshake” singer’s video — which has received over 408,000 views and more than 29,500 likes as of this writing — a woman wearing black can be seen caressing Kelis’ braids with a seemingly fascinated expression. The Grammy-nominated singer turns around to touch the hair of this woman, who yanks her own locks and then gives Kelis a thumbs up.
The woman’s friend, who wears yellow, joins in to examine Kelis’ hair, prompting the 43-year-old artist’s friend filming the encounter to say, “Just embrace it.”
“Oh, I love to be touched,” Kelis replies sarcastically. She and her friend can be seen laughing and smiling at each other, seemingly attempting to make light of the situation.
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“I don’t even know what to say here,” Kelis wrote in her recent post’s caption. “Happy freedom Friday fam.”
Several Instagram users applauded the singer for her patience, with one fan commenting, “You really are good sport… they are SO rude!”
“Babyyyyyy I would have flipped my hair so hard it would have smacked them lmao,” social media influencer Yasmine Jackson wrote.
Others wrote about similar experiences while traveling overseas, with one user commenting, “I completely feel this! I wore a fro while touring Asia and people could not keep their hands to themselves.”
“This was me in Japan. Very Common, they would come up and touch your braids,” another user commented.
However, some Twitter users criticized Kelis for not showing the same energy that she did when she called out Beyoncé for sampling her 1999 song “Get Along with You.”
“Kelis had all that energy for Beyoncé but ain’t wild out on them Asian women?? And don’t ask me what the correlation is,” one Twitter user commented.
Featured Image via @kelis
