dilemma in pictures
“Traveling as a fat person”: Woman shows on TikTok how uncomfortable traveling is for her – and hits a nerve
With her TikTok clip “Traveling As A Fat Person”, Mary Fran wants to draw attention to the difficulties that normal people usually don’t have when traveling
© Screenshot TikTok @itsmaryfran
Go to the toilet in the hotel? Dry off with a towel? Sitting on the balcony? Actually everyday situations that can pose problems for overweight people. 27-year-old Mary Fran Donnelly criticizes this in an inimitable way.
“Welcome to ‘Resident Fat Ass'” – “resident fat-ass”. This is how Mary Fran Donnelly introduces herself in her viral mini-series called Traveling as a fat person. In doing so, she ironically – and accompanied by her sister’s loud laughter in the background – makes fun of the problems that people have on vacation who don’t conform to the standardized ideal of beauty. The 27-year-old teacher and body positivity advocate is on a summer vacation with her family and shows her followers on the platform TikTok her hotel room, which poses various problems for her size.
She can’t get to the paper holder on the toilet and the towel is much too small
“Would you like to go to the toilet here? No problem – you will hardly fit on it though.” Mary Fran sits down, tries to turn but can hardly move. She laughs a little desperately into the camera, while her sister, who is filming her with her mobile phone, gasps with laughter at the tragic comedy.
“You need a towel for the shower?” Mary Fran gets up, grabs the hotel towel and tries to put it on: “No problem, it will never fit anyway, but how nice that you can go outside with it!” She wraps the towel around her upper body – and can’t even wrap herself completely with it. Similarly, in another video, she shows that she barely fits on the chair on the balcony and the pool towel isn’t much bigger than a child’s towel either.
Over seven million people have seen her clips on TikTok. Many feel addressed, as Mary Fran Donnelly deals with real problems that many people have that do not correspond to the normative ideal of society, but which hardly anyone talks about. As Mary Fran tells Buzzfeed: “I deal with this through humor. I made fun of a situation that is a very real stress for fat, plus-size people. My sister and I just laughed at it because it was so absurd it was.”
“Most people don’t even have to think about such challenges”
A large part of the reactions to her videos are positive – because Mary Fran represents many people who are otherwise hardly seen thanks to social media, where the image of slim, normal beautiful people is propagated all the more. Not everyone has to ask themselves questions like: Does the hotel towel fit? Or the seat belt on an airplane? Can this chair carry me? The answers also influence Mary Fran’s decisions, she openly admits to “Buzzfeed”.
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That’s why these issues should be addressed more openly, Mary Fran urges: “Body shapes and imagery have become so relevant in recent years that there’s no excuse why the hospitality and travel industries can’t start re-evaluating their practices. Thickness , plus-size people deserve to be seen as full human beings in an industry that should care about everyone’s size and physical needs.”
1.8 million TikTok users like this.
Sources: tik tok / Instagram / “buzz feed“