Last week, Serena Williams went viral after calling out a New York City hotel for using “cotton as decoration.”
Filming a video of a vase holding a cotton plant in the hotel hallway, Serena said, “Alright, everyone, how do we feel about cotton as decoration? Personally, for me, it doesn’t feel great.”
Serena then seemingly removed a piece of the cotton and said, “Actually, it feels like nail polish remover cotton,” before shuddering as she rubbed it across her nails.
Though Serena didn’t expand on why she didn’t like the plant, many people presumed it was because of the historic ties between cotton and slavery in the US.
Serena’s video — which was shared to her Instagram stories — quickly sparked a heated response, with several internet users accusing the retired tennis player of displaying performative outrage.
Before long, some media outletsreported that Serena actually owned a cotton decoration herself, which further fueled the discourse.
The sculpture owned by Serena and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, was made by late artist Radcliffe Bailey, and is titled “Monument for a Promise.” It depicts a donkey carrying a trunk while standing over a pile of cotton.
Alexis shared a photo of the sculpture back in 2020, while Serena described their front room — where the decoration is displayed — as her “favorite part” of the house during a 2021 interview with Architectural Digest.
Several internet users called outSerena for taking issue with the hotel’s cotton plant while having the Radcliffe Bailey sculpture on display in her home. One person suggested that the athlete was “using victimhood for currency,” while someone else said, “The fake outrage needs to stop.”
Amid all the discourse, Alexis entered the conversation to defend his wife.
Quote-tweeting an article about the Radcliffe Bailey sculpture, Alexis wrote, “Folks entitled to have their opinions, but to use owning Radcliffe Bailey’s Monument for a Promise as some kind of a ‘gotchya’ is so breathtakingly stupid—there is some very obvious symbolism of the cotton in the artwork.”
He then shared a screenshot of an AI-generated explanation of the Radcliffe Bailey sculpture’s symbolism, which you can view here. In short, the text states that the cotton was used by Bailey not only as a way to remind people of the history of slavery, but also as a symbol for a “brighter tomorrow.”