Ros Gold-Onwude Took the Scenic Route to Get to Beautiful

Ros Gold Onwude knew she was smart, strong, and powerful, but growing up, Ros admits to having a distant relationship with beauty and feeling as though she had no real connection to it.

“My mom did not know how to handle my hair,” the ESPN sports broadcaster says. “She used to pay me a dollar to sit down and let her comb it. It was so hard [for her.] She had very fine, thin hair and I had thick, tight curls.”

Yet despite the difficulty Pat Gold encountered when combing her daughter’s coils, it was also Mama Gold’s love and passion for basketball that helped fuel Ros.’  

“I’ve traveled all over the world, either playing or covering hoops,” the Queens, New York native says. “I got this opportunity to go from the Santa Cruz Warriors to the big team, The Golden State Warriors. My first year with them was the year they exploded. Everybody is watching them, and by default, they’re watching the little sideline reporter for the team too!”

All that attention from the Warriors’ success placed an unexpected spotlight on Ros, which, as a byproduct, fueled her beauty insecurities and led her to believe her nose was too big. “I remember I used to be obsessed. I’d sit down in the [makeup] chair. ‘Contour! Bring it in. Tight! Tighter!”

Check out the fourth video in the Complex and Sephora Beauty Beyond the Surface series to see how far Ros was willing to go to quiet her insecurity.