Colleen Ballinger, known for her awkward character "Miranda Sings," has faced a whole lot of controversy over the last few years. A recently surfaced video of her with dark colored paint on her face while performing Beyoncé's song "Single Ladies" definitely isn't helping her case.
The video was shared and quickly spread, with many people making the reasonable assumption the dark grease paint on her face while singing a song by a Black woman was an attempt at blackface.
Attorneys representing Ballinger have since reached out to news organizations such as Variety to clarify their client was not wearing blackface, but instead had left green face paint on after performing the song "As Long As You're Mine" from the musical Wicked.
The musical's protagonist, Elphaba, has green skin.
A longer version of the video shows the songs being performed back-to-back, not leaving Ballinger with enough time to remove the grease paint.
You can view that longer video below:
Ballinger's legal team also clarified around the time the clip was recorded, she was ending every show with "Single Ladies" because it was a popular bit.
The original shorter video clip shared to Twitter was reportedly from Ballinger's own book, according to Paige Christie who shared it.
This is far from the only controversy Ballinger has faced in recent years. Her most recent response to other accusations was more than a little bizarre.
Ballinger has been repeatedly accused of forming inappropriate relationships with underage fans, first in 2020 and again in June of this year.
Her response was a more than 10-minute video in which she sings and plays the ukulele in a video response she admitted her legal team advised her not to make.
"Even though my team has strongly advised me not to say what I’m going to say, I realized they never said I couldn’t sing about what I want to say."
In the video, Ballinger referred to the accusations as "lies," "gossip," and "made up for clout" and complained about people criticizing her.
The bizarre non-apology video has been viewed more than 9.7 million times as of time of writing. The sheer weirdness of it has led to a slew of parody videos from other content creators, and a whole lot more criticism of Ballinger in the YouTube comments.
At least she left the response to the "Single Ladies" video up to her legal team.
@thekalenallen/Threads
U.S. Mint
