Christina Milian’s boyfriend, Matt Pokora, faced some heavy backlash for seemingly comparing her daughter Violet’s hairstyle to the microbe emoji, many calling the joke racist. On Thursday, Matt, who is also the father of Christina’s second child, Isaiah, posted a video of 10-year-old Violet on his Instagram story. In the clip, Matt filmed Violet while she had her hair up in Bantu knots, as she asked him “what are you doing?” When he posted the video, he added a microbe emoji in the caption, along with a laughing emoji and a heart emoji. He even felt the need to draw an arrow from the microbe pointing at Violet’s hairstyle, seemingly implying that her hairstyle bears a resemblance to the symbol.
Many folks were outraged by the comparison, especially since the microbe emoji has come to be used across the Internet to represent the coronavirus. The implication that her hair “looks” like or even “is” a virus or disease was offensive to some people, especially since Matt is a white man mocking a young black girl’s hairstyle.
Matt later took to his IG stories again to shared some videos of himself and Violet to prove how close they are. The french musician posted a clip of Violet heading off to school with the caption, “Self confidence on point.” In the video, he tells Violet to “have a great day, be great, you’re a winner.” He shared some more videos of a similar nature, demonstrating how supportive he is of his honorary step-daughter. He has yet to directly address the microbe-hair-comparison controversy
