Why Grimes Won’t Do the Ice Bucket Challenge

Grimes, whose experimental arty pop music has won her a global audience of fans, was challenged to take the now-infamous Ice Bucket Challenge by Canadian electronic musician Richie Hawtin. But unlike the hundreds of celebrities who have succumbed to the frigid dare, as part of a massively successful online campaign to raise money and awareness for ALS treatments, Grimes declined to take part in the challenge.

She explained the decision on her Tumblr:

“I would like to say that I don’t feel great about wasting water in this california drought, but i will donate money. However I will not donate money to this foundation because of their record of testing on animals, but I will donate money to the Malala fund because education is the key to ending almost every issue that faces humanity and our world today.”

(The Malala Fund is dedicated to educating and empowering girls and young women around the globe. It’s named for influential co-founder and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai.)

A number of blogs and websites ran with the story, some of them characterizing Grimes’ decision as a “protest” of the Ice Bucket Challenge itself.

Grimes then posted several tweets to Twitter arguing with this characterization, saying she DID in fact take the challenge, just without using water or sending money to ALS.

After Pamela Anderson also called out the ALS Association for experimenting on animals, the organization admitted that it does do research involving rodents, worms and flies. It denied funding research involving monkeys being injected with chemicals, as Anderson had alleged.