8. The Sunflower Dress That Got Her Banned in China
In 2015, Katy was performing in Taiwan, and she wore a sunflower dress, which wasn’t that unusual for her. After all, she likes elaborate stage outfits, and sunflowers are featured in her stage shows. But in Taiwan, sunflowers have a political connotation. It has to do with the Sunflower Student Movement that was opposing a trade deal with China.
So while Katy might not have known what she was doing, showing up in that sunflower dress and wrapping herself in Taiwan’s flag during her performance made it look like she was making a political statement and subsequently upset China. What’s even funnier is that when she tried to get a Chinese visa in 2017, she found out she was banned from entering China for a while.
9. The Smurfs Dress
Katy Perry voiced Smurfette in The Smurfs movie, so of course she showed up to the premiere in a themed outfit. A short white dress with Smurfette’s face on it isn’t actually that far from what Smurfette wore in the movie, but some people were outraged that the dress Katy wore was skin-tight and strapless. They said she was hypersexualising a character from a kids’ movie. But for Katy Perry, it was a feminist gesture because she considered Smurfette to be an empowered woman and also because, as a child, her parents banned her from watching The Smurfs.
10. The Dark Horse Music Video
You’d think Katy would learn her lesson when she was criticised for appropriating Japan’s culture, but she did it again in her Dark Horse era. In the music video, she shows up dressed like a version of Cleopatra. On top of that, many people got upset because it appears that everyone who’s playing her servant in the video has a darker skin tone, and that could be interpreted as weaponizing slave narratives.
When talking about this in a Rolling Stone interview, Katy tried to defend herself, saying, “Can’t you appreciate a culture?” and concluded that she’ll just stick to baseball and hot dogs to be safe.
