An Ellie Goulding headdress controversy is slowly leaving the headlines, offering the 27-year-old English singer, the possibility to redeem herself in the eyes of some of her devoted fans.
The Ellie Goulding headdress drama started on Instagram over one week ago, when the “Burn” singer uploaded a picture of herself wearing a Native American Halloween costume.
Ellie Goulding‘s headdress in the photo really stood out and to get her message across, she used the caption, “Chief.” Goulding may have meant no harm when she posted the image, but it quickly went viral with many commentators labeling the talented young woman as racist.
Sensing that she may have crossed a line, the “Beating Heart” artist deleted the offending pic. Goulding has a different photo where the headdress is less visible that is still available on her Instagram page.
As the story started spreading everywhere on the web, Goulding found herself cornered and forced to provide some context to the controversial image. On November 1, the “Goodness Gracious” diva wrote on Twitter:
“I wore that beautiful unauthentic headpiece for about 5 minutes. I haven’t worn my costume for Halloween yet.”
This explanation was not enough for some people, who then urged her to use her enormous platform to spread good in the world. A Twitter user said:
“Hey Chief perhaps you can support the Native American Children/ Donate/ spread the word… IndianYouth.org/Dreamstarter”
Goulding jumped on the opportunity to move the ball forward. She answered:
“Then I shall! Thank you x.”
Few people did come to Goulding’s defense saying that she has never been racist, and that society has become too sensitive regarding matters of race.
The Ellie Goulding headdress incident is not the first Native American scandal to hit the music industry. Super producer and “Happy” crooner, Pharrell Williams, was forced to apologize after he was photographed wearing a Native American headdress on the cover of Elle magazine in June.
In related news, Ellie Goulding, who started dating English pop rock band McFly’s member, Dougie Poynter, in May 2014 came out on Saturday to deny that they recently got engaged.
After she was pictured with a new ring earlier this week, some in the media started speculating on a possible engagement.
