Coco Austin is making it clear she can be sexy and “still be a mother.”
The model told Tamron Hall on Tuesday that she doesn’t “think people need to change after having a child.”
The actress, who shares 6-year-old daughter Chanel with husband Ice-T, explained, “I think people thought, being Coco, I was gonna have a child and start dressing different [and] acting different, but it’s like, I’m still myself but a motherly self.
“I can still have my sexiness and still be a mother,” Austin, 43, continued. “I don’t have to shut that down.”
The dancer clarified that she is “not dumber” because she wears “tighter” clothes.
“This is the way I feel good,” she told the “Tamron Hall” audience.
Hall, 52, spoke to the “Ice Loves Coco” alum about the mom-shaming she has received over the years from social media trolls — and Austin cried during the candid conversation.
“I’m underneath a microscope all the time, and you don’t hear what good you do,” the former reality star said. “You just hear a lot of bad. And I know I’m a good mother.”
Austin elaborated on specific instances of criticism, from breast-feeding Chanel in 2021 to pushing the little one in a stroller the following year.
“It’s not a nutritional thing,” the “Playboy” model said of nursing her child. “It’s more of a bonding moment for us.”
As for the stroller, she told talk show viewers that she was “baffled” by the backlash.
“If she wasn’t in a stroller, she’d have asked me to carry her,” Austin recalled. “I thought this was the last picture someone would attack me [for].”
Instagram/Coco Austin
Instagram/Coco Austin
Instagram/Coco Austin
Instagram/Coco Austin
Instagram/Coco Austin
Instagram/Coco Austin
Instagram/Coco Austin
Ice-T, 64, has stepped in to defend his wife many times over the years, even sending a video for Hall to play in which he praised Austin’s parenting skills.
“You are the most incredible person I’ve ever met, the nicest person I’ve ever met and the best mother to Chanel that anyone could possibly imagine,” the “Law & Order: SVU” star gushed in the message.
The actor has been married to Austin since January 2002, and they renewed their vows 10 years later.
