Coco Gauff said she deleted social media for a month before coming back to TikTok earlier this week, then used an eight-minute video to answer criticism over how she looked in a new Miu Miu advertisement. The tennis star said she had seen thousands of comments about her appearance after the ad circulated, and she was not willing to let the discussion stand without a response.
Gauff said the backlash focused on her natural hair in the campaign, and that she had not wanted it slicked back for the photos because that is not good for her hair. She said her 4C hair was good enough for a high-fashion brand like Miu Miu to use in promoting one of its newest launches, and added that she was feeling rough after seeing the criticism. “There are thousands of people talking about the way that I look, and not in a positive way...” she said.
That response mattered because Gauff did more than defend a photoshoot. She tied the dispute to how Black girls see themselves, saying she used minimal makeup and the brand’s minimum aesthetic to connect with fans, and telling young Black girls with kinky hair to do what they want with it. “I’m not gonna apologize for the way that my hair looked,” she said, adding that her hair was fine the way it was and that “minimal is beautiful. Camp is beautiful.”
The criticism landed in the gap between a polished luxury campaign and a very ordinary problem for many Black women and girls: whether natural hair will be accepted in public, or picked apart. Gauff said people who hate on natural appearance are insecure themselves, and she widened that point by saying those who comment on how others look often have something deeply wrong with them. “Y’all did knock a diva down, I’m not gonna lie,” she said, before making clear she was not backing away from the message.
What comes next is less about the ad than the space Gauff now occupies. She has turned a beauty critique into a public statement about representation, and answered the question at the center of the backlash: whether her hair was acceptable for a luxury campaign. Her answer was no less than a defense of her own image, and of the girls she said should feel represented by it.
