Trisha Paytas has been forced to defend herself over accusations of wearing blackface after a photo of her dressed in ganguro fashion was shared by James Charles.
The image came from her time as popstar Trishii, where she would dress up in the Japanese style. Popular in the 1990s, the ganguro trend sees women tan their skin and couple it with contrasting makeup. In 2011, Paytas released a video called Kiss Kiss as Trishii and herself promoted it as being “ganguro-inspired”.
Her feud with James Charles comes after comments Paytas made about fellow TikTok stars Charli and Dixie D’Amelio in the wake of a video Charli made which some people claimed made her sound “entitled” — and led to her losing one million followers in just a few days.
Trisha Paytas suggests James Charles is being ‘predatory’
Trisha claimed Charles, who appeared in the video, was being “predatory” with 16-year-old Charli and her sister.
Charles hit back saying, “I didn’t want to respond to this because I didn’t want to give Trisha the attention that she’s clearly craving, however, I have now been accused of being a child groomer and this is not an accusation that I’m going to take lightly.”
He went on to accuse her of, among other things, racism, saying, “The only reason she is in the spotlight is because she has said racist things, she has said the ‘n-word,’ she’s done blackface, she offended the trans community, she offended the DID community, she said Hitler wasn’t that bad of a guy, voted for Trump, and has started a fight with about every single other creator on this platform.”
Trisha then posted a video hitting back at the claims, and denying she had ever “done blackface” — asking Charles to “show me where”.
After the video of her response was posted on Twitter, Charles posted back saying “ok” alongside an image of Paytas dressed as her Trishii character.
— James Charles (@jamescharles) November 20, 2020
Wikipedia ‘ganguro’ entry gets changed
A debate then raged among fans of both Charles and Paytas over the true meaning of “ganguro,” which even saw the Wikipedia entry for the term being changed.
Someone is editing the wikipedia article to say blackface, adding in blackface. Which is not related. pic.twitter.com/ZMBsLxIsio
— within cells interlinked (@warschbar) November 20, 2020
Paytas used to dress in ganguro fashion as her Japanese-inspired pop star character Trishii.
Paytas posted dozens of TikTok videos yesterday as the feud escalated, but signed off with one where she again defended herself against the accusations of blackface after other photos of her with dark skin surfaced.
@trishlikefish88#greenscreen♬ original sound – trishapaytas
She said, “Let me fill you in on a little story, because a lot of people have accused me of doing blackface, and James Charles and all these other TikToks are bringing up some old photos of me. I had a really bad addiction to tanning. I know that sounds really silly to a lot of people but I was actually on the first season of My Strange Addiction for tanning and it was a real psychological problem as most addictions are.”
Charles and Charli D’Amelio are known to be good friends and were seen enjoying filming together with other social media stars back in October. Like Charli, Charles has also been the victim of being “canceled” which resulted in him losing several million followers.