Over the past week and a half, Blake Lively has been the unofficial queen of Cannes, dazzling at the film festival in one look after the next all befitting her honorary Disney princess status. But even red carpet royalty can make a misstep, which may explain what happened when the actress posted an Instagram split shot of the front and back of her gold Atelier Versace dress from one of her first photo opps of the festival captioned with the song lyric, “An L.A. Face with an Oakland Booty.”
For those who don’t immediately get the reference, the caption is a quote from Sir Mix-a-lot’s song “Baby Got Back,” a much-beloved rap anthem that’s only gained popularity in our booty-obsessed era. The problem is that the “L.A. face” and “Oakland booty” have racially charged connotations that are striking some as particularly inappropriate when used by one of Hollywood’s most famously beautiful blondes.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BFhx9lGR4Jj/?taken-by=blakelively
And the reactions from Twitter have been pretty scathing, to say the least:
https://twitter.com/sadydoyle/status/732733917443297280?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
https://twitter.com/IanKarmel/status/732794849615876096?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
https://twitter.com/supersloth/status/732804005676584961?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
https://twitter.com/mindamaureen/status/732756140673622016?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
Still others are supporting the star: Her Instagram post has well over 564,000 likes, with plenty of fans coming to her defense in the comments (examples: “Love you @blakelively Dont listen to the haters!!” and “I think this is hilarious. It’s song lyrics, people! Come on!”). At this point, Lively has not offered any further elaboration on the caption — and she hasn’t taken the photo off Instagram, either.