American singer Kelis shares video showing 2 women in Singapore touching her hair without permission

R&B singer Kelis Rogers-Mora, or Kelis, recently posted a video on Instagram showing an uncomfortable interaction she experienced while in Singapore.

In the video, which she posted on Saturday (Oct 22), the singer was sitting at a coffee shop when two women standing behind her started touching her braided hair and exclaiming in Mandarin about its length and whether it was real.

One of the women even said “wow” and gave a thumbs up after stroking several of Kelis’ braids.

The singer, best known for her 2003 hit song Milkshake, captioned the post: “I don’t even know what to say here.”

The hair-touching and exclaiming went on for quite a while and Kelis appeared to be unsure how to respond to these people invading her personal space. She turned to her friend, who was presumably recording this interaction, and shrugged.

“Just embrace it,” the friend said with a laugh, to which Kelis replied sarcastically, “Oh, I like to be touched.”

It appeared that Kelis was initially trying to approach the interaction with good humour, even turning around to touch one of the women’s hair in response, but the singer mostly looked bemused and resigned at the unwanted attention.

Many commenters on Kelis’ post pointed out that it was rude of the women to touch a stranger’s hair without asking for permission first.

One person wrote: “It’s the entitlement. They don’t even see the human attached to the hair. Just an object.”

Another said that she was sorry Kelis had gone through that. “The unmitigated gall to approach someone you don’t know and treat them like they’re on display in a petting zoo. Kelis, doesn’t owe them her resistance. She doesn’t owe them any 'sportsmanship', while being dehumanized. It’s unnerving and it’s exhaustingly annoying,” wrote themusingsofher.

The video was later reposted on The Shade Room, where it garnered thousands of comments. Several commenters pointed out that the women were likely visiting Singapore and were not Singaporeans.

One commenter said: “It's unlikely anything like that will happen to you in Singapore. No one looked at me twice while I was there. Those are likely Chinese tourists, visiting Singapore, who lack boundaries.”

Others piped in to say that Kelis should have stopped the women and not allowed them to treat her like she was in a “petting zoo”. 

The singer herself took to the comments to explain her reaction. She wrote that she thought the women were genuine in their admiration of her hair. 

"First, I was caught off-guard. Second, they were enamoured, as they should be," she wrote. 

The singer, who was in Singapore during F1 in late September, added that she doesn't like being touched and would have likely responded differently if she were in the US or Europe.