Melissa Blake is a blogger. And one day she wrote a post about Donald Trump that went viral. Doesn’t really matter if it was a positive or negative post about the president. What matters about this particular post are the comments that followed it, which carried a photo of Melissa.
Many people commented that she was ugly. Here are some of the horrendous comments she received: “A perfect example of a land whale,” “Melissa is actually a potato masquerading as a journalist,” She’s an “overweight, real-life version of ‘Peppermint Patty’ from Peanuts,” and “Is that her picture? Ewwwww!”
These are just a few of those nasty comments to Melissa. So she took screenshots of the posts and put them on Twitter, along with the names of those who sent them to her.
With this post, she said: “Reminder that this is what it’s like to be a disabled woman writer on the internet AND #ThisIsAmerica in 2019.”
Reminder that this is what it’s like to be a disabled woman writer on the internet AND #ThisIsAmerica in 2019: A conservative YouTuber mentioned my recent op-ed about #UnfollowTrump. The comments? I’m fat, ugly and look like a blob fish, a parade balloon and a potato with a face. pic.twitter.com/ROczIXKNom
— Melissa Blake (@melissablake) August 8, 2019
38-year-old Melissa has a muscle and bone disorder that affects her face, mouth, hands and feet. She has been through 26 surgeries to straighten the joints in her hands and her feet. She also has scoliosis, a condition of a twisted back. She’s used to people staring, but this time those words… those hateful, nasty words… just cut into her. Someone even told her to stop posting anything because she was “just too ugly.”
So Melissa took things a step further, and posted even MORE selfies of herself. In doing this, she explained why. Then she started receiving a lot more comments; only THIS time, they were positive and very supportive of her. That post was retweeted more than 30,000 times. And it was liked almost 300,000 times.
During the last round of trollgate, people said that I should be banned from posting photos of myself because I’m too ugly. So I’d just like to commemorate the occasion with these 3 selfies… 📸😉👋🏻 pic.twitter.com/9ZuSYFOtwv
— Melissa Blake (@melissablake) September 7, 2019
And to carry things on, Melissa challenges others to share their selfies with the hashtag MyBestSelfie, along with a loving note toward themselves. Sounds like a great idea for all of us… even us older ones. 🙂
