There is a beautiful bouquet of white roses on the piano at Arcadia Senior Living in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and it is not an arrangement paid for by the facility.
If he looked at a note attached to the flowers, he would see that it was none other than Rihanna.
“You Ladies Dance Was Amazing,” says the Grammy Award-winning singer.
“When Rihanna’s roses came out, we were all in shock,” Paige Oakes, director of community affairs at Arcadia Senior Living Bowling Green, told HuffPost via email. “All week, we’ve been waiting to see if we hear from him.”
The flowers sent to the facility on Saturday were a thank you from the Fenty Beauty founder for a TikTok on the Arcadia Senior Living account where heseveral women recreated the singer’s “Bitch Better Have My Money” Super Bowl performance. The residents’ video has garnered more than 31 million views on the social platform.
In the short but adorable clip, 11 women are decked out in their own versions of the white outfits Rihanna’s backup dancers wore to the big game. Then, during the song “Rude Boy,” the women turn to the side to reveal resident Dora Martin, 87, dressed in red just like RiRi during her Super Bowl performance.
“We were so excited to hear that Rihanna watched the video and they saw our amazing girls having fun and dancing to her music,” Oakes told HuffPost.
Rihanna wasn’t the only star to show her appreciation for the sweet moves of Arcadia Senior Living residents.
Jay-Z also sent the ladies 100 “beautiful” long-stemmed red roses last week.
“I would say half knew about TikTok and the other half didn’t know what it was, so we had to explain that,” Oakes told HuffPost about her residents’ knowledge of social media before she and the facility’s director of engagement, Maitlin Nuckols . , to do this thing. TikTok account.
“Maitlin and I decided a few months ago to create a TikTok account, not thinking we’d go viral,” added Oakes. “We just tried to find something new and interesting for the residents.”
She added that she and Nuckols came up with the idea to recreate Rihanna’s Super Bowl performance — and they’re glad they did.
“They love all the fame and attention,” Oakes said of the facility’s residents.
Nuckols told Buzzfeed who are happy that their TikTok account is getting views for a delightful reason.
“Everybody loves to see the older generation let loose and have fun,” Nuckols said. “You always think of the older population in that way and then I feel like this video shows another side of them.”
