Studying Time: 3 minutes
Serena Williams is asking if cotton is your best option for lodge decor.
Some folks on the web are getting riled up.
They usually’re venting their anger on the world-class athlete.
Serena has made controversial selections. Is critiquing a lodge’s adorning selections considered one of them? What is that this actually about?
Serena Williams has some ideas on ornamental cotton
This week noticed the launch of Nike’s SKIMS collaboration.
Serena Williams has lengthy been in affiliation with Nike as a model.
It seems that the corporate put her up in a lodge for the launch occasion in New York.
Taking to social media, the famous person athlete critiqued the lodge decor — particularly, a white vase containing cotton branches.
Serena Williams questions cotton branches as decor pic.twitter.com/TcNCT6TJx7
— Kaiser@Celebitchy (@KaiseratCB) September 26, 2025
“Alright, everybody,” Serena addressed her followers. “How can we really feel about cotton as ornament?”
She admitted: “Personally for me, it doesn’t really feel nice.”
A follow-up previous noticed Serena telling her followers that the cotton “appears like nail polish remover cotton.” It’s not a praise.
Cue the raging trolls fuming at her
To be clear, Serena Williams actually gave the impression of she was critiquing the selection in decor.
There are various lovely white flowers and off-white crops {that a} lodge might use to brighten. From a purely design standpoint, cotton will be an off-putting alternative.
It’s not fairly Hildi Santo-Tomas stapling precise straw to a wall in somebody’s home on Buying and selling Areas.
However that decor crime does come to thoughts after we consider cotton stalks simply chilling in corridors.
Sadly, that didn’t cease a sure factor of the web from having what seems to be a racist meltdown.
“Serena Williams has reached peak Karen,” insisted one social media denizen.
“Exhausting to think about…. however black fragility has spilled onto the tennis courtroom,” tweeted one other.
This misused time period makes an attempt to deflect from the documented cases of white fragility within the face of our nation’s historical past of racism. You recognize, just like the mere query of cotton as decor.
Is cotton racist? No — however the corrosive stain of racism touches many issues, together with agriculture
Cotton has a protracted and ugly historical past in america, as a result of it was a staple crop for textile manufacturing throughout generations of slavery.
The cotton plant and references to “cotton-picking” too usually play a task in anti-Black racist statements, jokes, and extra.
Nevertheless, and now we have to emphasise this … Serena Williams didn’t really point out any of that.
There are folks in our nation who famously insist that there are individuals who sit round simply ready to “be offended.”
Nevertheless, these making this declare seem like projecting.
Serena mentioned that she didn’t just like the decor. Perhaps it’s as a result of cotton is a permanent image of America’s racist historical past — a historical past that some would somewhat obscure than confront.
Or possibly as a result of it’s simply not a horny plant. Or possibly each.
The folks so desirous to assault her don’t want an actual reply — they simply need to be offended that anybody would possibly have emotions about racism. It’s a illness.
