For much of this season of Love Island USA—the American version of the U.K. franchise, which finally became a sensation stateside last summer—Cierra has been a fan favorite, widely considered one of the most emotionally mature women on the show and, alongside her romantic partner Nic Vansteenberghe, a front-runner for the grand prize of $100,000, which is awarded to the couple who stays together to the end and wins the most votes from viewers. She gained hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers (in many ways the game’s true prize) and appeared better positioned than ever to win by becoming the first girl this year to “close off” her coupling, making her and Nic’s relationship exclusive and shutting down the possibility of further romantic exploration with other “Islanders.” But a sour note had begun creeping into the public’s perception of Cierra: Her earlier decision to eliminate a popular fellow Islander (as part of a group vote), and her subsequent defense of that decision that encapsulated the thread of hypocrisy running throughout the villa this season, started to turn fans against Cierra and her two closest friends, whom viewers dubbed “mean girls.” It was into this swirling mass of drama that the bombshell was dropped: In an Instagram story about getting Botox, reportedly from February 2023, Cierra had apparently written, “I can also be a little chinky when I laugh/smile so I love getting a mini brow lift to open up my eyes and get that snatched look.” (Another Instagram post, this one from 2015, showed Cierra smiling on a hill, captioned “Still chinkin’ even at the top.”) Other circulating screenshots, per the Washington Post, suggested that Cierra had been made aware of the derogatory nature of the term and yet, as recently as 2024, was still using it.
Author: Jenny G. Zhang
Published at: 2025-07-07 21:11:06
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