Halle Bailey, the up-and-coming singer and songwriter who shot to fame this year as Ariel in the live-action Little Mermaid, has a decent response to recent criticism: Hush!
“I hope everyone has a safe and lovely halloween!!! i had so much fun dressing up as legends this yearrr,” she wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on October 31, continuing, “get off twitter go dress up, touch grass and have fun outside !!!!” (ICYMI, touch grass is a phrase that means “you’re spending too much time online and you need to reconnect with reality.”)
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I can’t argue with anything in this statement. We should all spend more time having fun dressing up with our friends and less time melting down over what young celebs are up to. But it’s worth discussing the various reasons, some more legit than others, that people might have been criticizing Bailey lately, leading her to make this statement.
She’s currently in a relationship with rapper DDG, who has said some not so nice things about her in his songs. So when the pair posted couple’s costumes, there may have been some criticism that she was promoting her relationship with a guy who didn’t give her the respect she deserves. And on one hand, this is totally between them and we don't know how they actually are behind closed doors. But on the other, you don’t have to post your relationship. And in this case, the “legends” the couple chose also added fuel to the fire. Their first costumes were to recreate a photo shoot as Janet Jackson and Tupac. It’s honestly really good. Their second couple’s costumes were Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, which angered some fans, as Brown is widely believed to have abused Houston during their marriage (which he denied).
Finally, and this is only relevant in terms of the context in which people view Halle Bailey’s choices, her sister Chloë, with whom she is very close and often collaborates, released a song with noted domestic abuser Chris Brown this year. Perhaps it’s harder for viewers to think of Whitney and Bobby as “just costumes” when abusers continue to profit in the music industry, but the overall point is this: Neither Halle nor Chloë ever abused anybody, so let’s be most mad at the men.
