photo: Getty

Solange Knowles is fashion’s quintessential cool girl. She DJ’s at fashion fêtes, loves her some BBQ Kettle chips, has impeccable personal style, and rocks a fab ‘fro we all want to nestle our faces in. But not everyone is as in love with her tresses as we are.

Natural hair blog Curly Nikki posted an excerpt from an interview with Ms. Knowles in the June issue of Essence about her hair secrets. While some commenters responded positively to the piece, there were many who, well, didn’t (this is the internet, after all). Here’s what they had to say:

“Natural hair can be VERY beautiful. Solange’s hair is not. Even if she wore an afro, pick it out even or something. It always looks unkempt…Boo for not even trying to represent with her natural fro’ness.”

“she really needs to put some work into STYLING her hair. This is why people think natural hair looks bad…”

“Solange wears ‘natural’ wigs more than she wears her own natural and when she does, it looks dry, unstyled and unshaped. If she’s truly proud of her natural look, she needs to get from under the wigs and work with her own hair. She has much potential, but she’s not using it.”

It was this post from tumblr Moderne Meid, criticizing these vitriolic reactions, that set Solange Knowles off on a Twitter tirade this Thursday. The ladies over at The Glamazons Blog spotted Solo’s tweets, in which she says:

“I never painted myself as a team natural vice president. I don’t know the lingo and don’t sleep with a satin cap… However, I did [notice] when I picked out my hair, I kept seeing feedback about needing a “twist out”. Connnnfesssioonnn: I HATE twist outs. Correction, I hate the way they look on me SO I end up always picking them/ steaming them out. Look, all I’m saying is. My hair is not very important to me… so [i] don’t encourage it to be important to you.”

So why all the backlash from “natural” advocates?