Williams had a statue with cotton in her house in 2021.

PublishedSeptember 27, 2025 5:08 PM EDT•UpdatedSeptember 27, 2025 5:08 PM EDT

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Serena Williams really hates cotton — or does she?

On Friday, I wrote about how the 23-time Grand Slam champion was in a 5-star hotel in New York City. She was preparing to attend a party hosted by Kim Kardashian to announce the launch of her new women’s active wear brand, and tons of A-list celebrities were.

Despite all the lavish and privileged circumstances she was indulging in, she decided to whine about a cotton statue because it brought back uncomfortable memories of the slavery she experienced.

“Alright, everyone. How do we feel about cotton as decoration?” she asked fans on Instagram. “Personally, for me, it doesn’t feel great.”

Any sane person would know that acting like you’ve been a slave when you’ve lived in luxury for nearly your whole life is completely absurd. But her comments get even more ridiculous when you consider a post of hers from 2021.

During that year, she welcomed a guest into her home (co-designed by her sister, Venus), and an astute internet sleuth pointed out that at the time, there was a statue of a donkey standing over a mound of cotton maybe 25 feet from her front door.

The statue was called “Monument for a Promise,” and her husband posted a picture of it on his Instagram account in 2020.

That’s funny. I thought cotton was triggering for her? Apparently, the traumatic memories it induced (joke) couldn’t stop her from putting a mound of it as a major feature in a statue in the first room of her house.

You might say, “Well, her opinions about cotton may have changed.” I mean yeah, but they’ve obviously changed in the dumbest way imaginable.

Maybe, just maybe, Williams wasn’t being honest about what she thought about cotton when in New York. Instead, she was likely trying to get some attention, as if all the adulation she receives in her everyday life isn’t enough.

It must be tough being a pop culture and sports legend, so hard that you can’t even be consistent about something as inconsequential as cotton artwork.