Hi friend,
I've just returned from my first long trip during the pandemic. I traveled from the U.S. west coast to east coast for my sister's MBA graduation. We come from a blue-collar background, she's a single mom who fought every step of the way for this, and I'm so proud of her I'm about to burst.
It was a hard trip in a few different ways, but one of the hardest was traveling during an ongoing pandemic that most people are ignoring. Only a few people (as in, could count them on one hand) in each airport were masking, I was the only one masked on all my flights, and was one of three people masking at the (crowded indoor) graduation ceremony.
I shared the photo above, of me in a
Flo mask at an airport, on Twitter. It was picked up by an anti-masker with 325,000 followers, who made multiple posts making fun of me. I then got to deal with a deluge of harassment during my trip.
I won't share the nasty things said about me because it doesn't need to be spread further, but the majority of those comments made fun of me not just for masking…but for being fat. Many of them called my mask things like a feed trough or bowl strapped to my face.
As you go about your week, I'd like for you to be thinking about these questions:
» Why might the response to a photo of a fat woman masking be so vehement and cruel?
» How are anti-fatness and anti-masking connected?
» How does this response to a marginalized person (female, fat, autistic) demonstrate the larger cultural callousness toward those who are marginalized?
» What can you do to push back and defend people when you see responses like this happening? What might you say?
Also, if you're not currently masking in public, please consider doing so. I mask not just to protect myself and my family, and not just to protect high-risk and vulnerable people, but because I care about everyone around me that much.
