Halsey’s ‘White People Shampoo’ Rant Works Twitter Into a Lather

Singer-songwriter Halsey caused a social media uproar on Thursday when she addressed the absence of diverse hygiene products in hotels.

The 23-year-old wrapped up a tour in Australia this week, and in the process vented about hotels a little bit. She posted a single tweet calling the lack of usable hair care products “annoying,” but fans were so enthralled by the topic that it persisted for several days, dominating her feed.

“I’ve been traveling for years now and it’s been so frustrating that the hotel toiletry industry entirely alienates people of color,” she wrote on Thursday evening. “I can’t use this perfumed watered down white people shampoo. Neither can 50% of [your] customers. Annoying.”

After that, Halsey moved onto other topics — tweeting about the show, writing two prolonged messages of thanks to her fans, and even wondering whether she could get to the movies and see Avengers: Infinity War. However, she couldn’t ignore the mounting replies to her post about shampoo.

One person replied “you are one of the white people sweetie,” to which Halsey replied “No. I am Not.”

She has addressed her race and ethnicity before, tweeting in 2014 “my dad is black and a little Irish and my mom is Italian and Hungarian!”

Many people responded with possible solutions, including telling Halsey to bring her own shampoo when she travels or buy the right shampoo elsewhere. Many respondents criticized the singer for turning what they saw as a mundane thing into a “racial issue.” Without getting combative, the singer grounded the conversation with another tweet.

“I’m fortunate enough to be financially in a position to [bring my own shampoo], but POC traveling frequently for work/medical reasons might not be. Just making a point is all!” she wrote in response to a fan.

On Friday, the topic persisted.

“Who knew me acknowledging that white hair care products are the national standard (while POC are confined to a tiny aisle) would piss so many people of,” she wrote, “not sorry.”

“I’ve been to hotels with f—ing Hermès toiletries,” she wrote later. “The point is, people think ‘oh they just use normal cheap shampoo’ but that’s because u associate ‘normal’ with ‘white.’ That’s not everyone’s standard. End of story. I’m good on the shampoo debate now [laugh out loud].”

Still, the debate raged on into Saturday. Halsey went on to defend her stance on shampoo in a total of eleven tweets. She called an official end to the discussion on Saturday.

“It’s about being made to feel unincluded. Which is, obviously, a far greater problem than shampoo. I never wanna talk about soap ever again lol.”

Halsey, who became a Platinum recording artist after touring with Imagine Dragons and collaborating with Justin Bieber, is returning to the United States. She won’t be resting on her laurels, however, as she has a number of shows and festival appearance scheduled around the country this summer.