Kelly Rowland was back on the carpet in Cannes last night, making her way up the red steps of the Palais, this time without incident and looking excellent in a dramatic white gown by Jean-Louis Sabaji.
This after making headlines earlier in the week when an incident between her and a particularly aggressive security guard went viral.
Omg French Karen had Kelly Rowland all the way fucked up at Cannes pic.twitter.com/dubBT3IiF9
— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) May 21, 2024
Are security at the event within their rights to usher guests into the venue and keep the carpet moving? Sure. And Kelly, as you can see above, understands this. She heads towards the steps when she’s asked to. But that doesn’t mean she has to treat the steps like it’s an Olympic sprint. She can make her way up the steps and turn back to wave and pose a little more, and this could have all happened in a civilised manner if not for these people, and the female security in particular, actively blocking Kelly from being photographed, and basically saying to her, with her body language, “Enough is enough”. On a red carpet? At Cannes? During a fortnight of excess and extra? When is it ever “enough”? That’s of course especially triggering if it’s a woman of colour, and even more especially if it’s a Black woman. To be told be told that it's “enough” by this white woman that she’s had enough of her time in the spotlight, and then laugh patronisingly in her face, and also afterwards with her colleagues. Like, haha, can you believe this Black woman who wanted more than she deserves and who I just had to shut down?
I know this because I’ve been to Cannes, I’ve covered the festival multiple times, so I’ve seen first-hand how f-cking rude they can be there, and selectively. So my interpretation of what went down here comes from experience – they are insolent assholes. And as a lowly reporter, I have wanted so many times to put a finger in their faces, the way Kelly did, but of course they’d probably throw me in jail. Or, you know, put me on a boat, because yes, it can be that racially insensitive in France.
This was Kelly holding her ground and I can’t imagine she relished having to do it or being seen doing it, since we all know how the world polices a Black women’s behaviour and many of us have been guilty of that kind of ignorance (I certainly include myself in that group), not considering the layers and layers of bullsh-t microaggressions Black women have to live with, even at the Cannes Film Festival. And then to have to shake it off and come back another day, glowing and unbothered, thankfully, and do it all over again.
