Katy Perry has spoken out on incidents where she has been accused of ‘cultural appropriation.’ Uproxx reports that the pop singer was speaking to Black Lives Matter activist and Pod Save The People’s DeRay Mckesson as part of her four-day live stream to promote her new album, Witness when she decided to discuss the subject that has long been attached to her and her career.
Perry originally drew criticism of cultural appropriation for her 2014 ‘This Is How We Do’ music video, which sees her eating watermelon and styling her hair with cornrows, telling Mckesson how it was a friend of hers that made her realise.
“She told me about the power in black women’s hair and how beautiful it is and the struggle,” Perry said. “I listened and I heard and I didn’t know and I won’t ever understand some of those things because of who I am. I will never understand, but I can educate myself and that’s what I’m trying to do along the way.”
Perry also mentions the time she tried to appreciate Japanese Culture, referring to her 2013 American Music Awards performance where she dressed up like a geisha stating “I did it wrong, and I didn’t know that I did it wrong. until I heard people saying I did it wrong. It takes someone to say out of compassion, out of love ‘Hey, this is what the origin is’.”
You can watch Katy discuss the issue below.
Katy Perry acknowledging her mistakes regarding cultural appropriation, this is extremely respectable of her pic.twitter.com/RkvIhEnXxX
— ㅤ (@touchnick) June 11, 2017
This week also saw Katy Perry speak about personal mental health issues during a real life therapy session broadcasted on her witness worldwide four-day live stream. Speaking with Dr. Suri Singh, the pop star talked about the pressures of being a pop star, and a woman constantly in the public eye. Introducing the therapy session by talking about her childhood, Perry became tearful as she spoke of how she feels when she is ‘Katheryn Hudson’ her given birth name rather than her pop star alias ‘Katy Perry.’ “I’m really strong as Katy Perry, sometimes I’m not as strong as Katheryn Hudson..”
Perry also discussed topics such as her battle with alcoholism and depression, telling Dr. Singh how she wrote a song about suicide and that she felt “ashamed” that she had those thoughts in her head. You can watch the video on Perrys’ Youtube channel here.
Perrys’ four-day live stream also saw her take yoga classes, cook with Gordon Ramsay, react to online videos and bond with RuPaul, and much more, all now also available to watch on her official YouTube Channel.
