Kim Kardashian facing backlash for dressing as Aaliyah on Halloween is just ridiculous | Life (2025)

One thing's for sure. When it comes to Halloween, Keke always wins with her choice of uncanny looks. This year she decided to pay tribute to musical legends.

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As usual, she went all out and dressed up as three legends, first channelling the iconic Goddess of Pop, Cher, in bohemian flared bottoms with an impressive, dazzling crop top. She had her bestie, Jonathan Cheban accompany her as Sonny. They were paying tribute to their look worn at the 1973 Oscars.

And Cher wholly approved, calling Kimmy her "little Armenian sister".

She then wowed her fans by replicating Madonna's look at the 1991 Academy Awards. Fur coat, sparkly dress, elegant 'do– she nailed it.

Everyone was happy, but then, of course, there had to be that one that rocked the boat and really began to irk the Twitter-verse. Choosing the late R&B singer, Aaliyah, in her Try Again music video as her muse, several tweets showed people were just not impressed.

Mixed emotions show that some were quick to jump on the cultural appropriation bandwagon and critique her on full blast, with many also jumping to her defense and drawing praise for her choice.

While we know that the Kardashian-Jenner clan is no stranger to culture appropriation offences, it seems like people are always too quick to call them out. But we need to take a second and evaluate why everything is wrong with Kim receiving flak.

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Kim decided to pay homage to the late singer, which should be admirable. In no way did she do blackface. If she did, that would've been a different story altogether.

In choosing to dress up as Aaliyah, she has expressed herself by drawing inspiration from the late singer. On the topic of cultural appropriation versus appreciation, Professor Adam Haupt explainedin an interview with Cape TalkonThe Eusebius McKaiser Show that "an expression of ideas is not analogous to taking tangible property," which is linked to appropriation, and that, after all, "citation is a form of flattery".

Kim didn't purport to speak for a people that has been marginalised by claiming their lived experience, and in paying homage, she hadn't pushed any limits nor has she 'stolen' from the singer or black culture.

Power is the key to appropriation, and the fact that Kim is being dragged for being dressed as an actual human being and hasn't cashed in on something that is not her lived experience or with the intention of building her own brand is utterly absurd.

The queen of social media has yet to comment on the whole controversy, but we bet she's just given an indifferent shrug to the whole matter and is sitting behind her screen like...

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