Rihanna is being praised for her response to cultural appropriation accusation
Rihanna is being praised for her response to an Instagram follower who accused the star of cultural appropriation after referring to her Savage X Fenty choreographer as her “spirit animal.”
The singer and designer took to social media to celebrate the release of the pre-recorded New York Fashion Week runway show on Amazon Prime. And although her 75-million-plus followers were excited to see all of the content, one took notice of Rihanna’s controversial use of the term and called her out on it.
“Ya’ll are literally bout to witness why this woman right here is my spirit animal!” Rihanna captioned a photo with Parris Goebel. “God gifted genius!!”
Shortly after, one follower commented, “Please stop using ‘spirit animal’ unless you belong to one of the indigenous groups to which this concept belongs,” and Rihanna provided a praise-worthy response.
We The Urban was the first to post a screenshot of the exchange between Rihanna and the follower, which captured the 31-year-old’s eloquent reply, “You’re so right! It won’t happen again.”
The publication captioned the screenshot, “It’s that simple.”
British model and trans activist Munroe Bergdorf then re-posted We The Urban to express further appreciation of Rihanna’s reply.
“Queen Rihanna demonstrating how to hold yourself accountable with humility and class,” Bergdorf captioned the post. “We all hold the potential to get things wrong, we all hold the potential to behave offensively unintentionally. What matters is how you react when someone calls you out on it.”
People flooded the comments with more kudos for Rihanna and her example of how to graciously deal with constructive criticism.
“So refreshing when people can admit they're wrong and apologize with integrity,” one person commented. Another wrote, “Rihanna did the right thing.”
One even added, “the amount of dragging and cancelling that could be avoided if celebrities just responded like this is wild.”
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