A young mother has served a man on Facebook who had called her a “2 ton woman” during a flight. The passenger – who was sitting in the seat next to Katie Kiacz – Immediately showed his disdain when she entered the cabin of the plane.
The collision took place last Tuesday on a flight from Orlando to Detroit, writes Kiacz in an open letter to the man. “You referred to me as a ‘2 ton woman’. You told your friends soon as boarded and you saw me that it was “not good”. When I confronted you saying “I am not 2 ton but I did just have a baby”, you sighed and got up and use the bathroom, then quietly ask the flight attendant for a different seat. I am glad that there were not any. And I bet you did not tell her why you wanted to sit elsewhere.”
“Heartless”
According to Kiacz, the man’s words were “heartless.” “You did not apologize. You have just ignored me radically for the whole flight. That’s fine. I do not need your approval. Why do I posting? To confront you. Because I do not exist to please you. Because I take up as much space as I want. Because you did not think you were wrong or even apologized even when I spoke to you about it.” She goes even further. “I am glad that you had to sit next to me the whole flight of 2 hours. The only thing I regret is that I could not take more space”, it sounds firm.
She also writes that she is tired of being treated like a woman. “Would he have said that if I had been a man? Or if my husband and my daughter had been there? I don’t know. But women deal with this attitudes and behaviours more than men. That I don’t know. And. I. Am. Over. It.
Kiacz concluded her message with the hope that her message would be read by a woman who knew the man. “Hopefully she can tell him why his behaviour was inappropriate,” she says. “Not that I think it will make a difference.”
Support
The woman’s post was shared more than 100,000 times and she received support from other women who were also afraid to fly for fear of commenting on their weight. “The love and support I received after my message was surreal,” she wrote a day later on Facebook. “At the time, I was trembling with anger and overwhelmed by grief. For a moment I was ashamed and felt insecure. I had to remind myself who I really was and what I already realized in my life.”
It is not clear who the man in question was. Kiacz did add a photo of him to her message. Delta has also not yet publicly responded to the message.
