Serena Williams is asking if cotton is the best choice for hotel decor.
Some people on the internet are getting riled up.
And they’re venting their anger at the world-class athlete.
Serena has made controversial choices. Is critiquing a hotel’s decorating choices one of them? What is this really about?
Serena Williams has some thoughts on decorative cotton
This week saw the launch of Nike’s SKIMS collaboration.
Serena Williams has long been in association with Nike as a brand.
It appears that the company put her up in a hotel for the launch event in New York.
Taking to social media, the superstar athlete critiqued the hotel decor — in particular, a white vase containing cotton branches.
Serena Williams questions cotton branches as decor pic.twitter.com/TcNCT6TJx7
— Kaiser@Celebitchy (@KaiseratCB) September 26, 2025
“Alright, everyone,” Serena addressed her followers. “How do we feel about cotton as decoration?”
She admitted: “Personally for me, it doesn’t feel great.”
A follow-up past saw Serena telling her followers that the cotton “feels like nail polish remover cotton.” It’s not a compliment.
Cue the raging trolls fuming at her
To be clear, Serena Williams really sounded like she was critiquing the choice in decor.
There are many beautiful white flowers and off-white plants that a hotel could use to decorate. From a purely design standpoint, cotton can be an off-putting choice.
It’s not quite Hildi Santo-Tomas stapling actual straw to a wall in someone’s house on Trading Spaces.
But that decor crime does come to mind when we think of cotton stalks just chilling in corridors.
Unfortunately, that did not stop a certain element of the internet from having what appears to be a racist meltdown.
“Serena Williams has reached peak Karen,” insisted one social media denizen.
“Hard to imagine…. but black fragility has spilled onto the tennis court,” tweeted another.
This misused term attempts to deflect from the documented instances of white fragility in the face of our nation’s history of racism. You know, like the mere question of cotton as decor.
Is cotton racist? No — but the corrosive stain of racism touches many things, including agriculture
Cotton has a long and ugly history in the United States, because it was a staple crop for textile production during generations of slavery.
The cotton plant and references to “cotton-picking” too often play a role in anti-Black racist statements, jokes, and more.
However, and we have to emphasize this … Serena Williams did not actually mention any of that.
There are people in our country who famously insist that there are people who sit around just waiting to “be offended.”
However, those making this claim appear to be projecting.
Serena said that she didn’t like the decor. Maybe it’s because cotton is an enduring symbol of America’s racist history — a history that some would rather obscure than confront.
Or maybe because it’s just not an attractive plant. Or maybe both.
The people so eager to attack her don’t need a real answer — they just want to be angry that anyone might have feelings about racism. It’s a sickness.