Rep. Ayanna Pressley has a message for online trolls

U.S. Representative Ayanna Soyini Pressley bravely revealed in January that she had been struggling with her image and even shame because of symptoms from an autoimmune disease called alopecia areata, which had caused her immune system to attack her hair follicles. The Massachusett’s representative had always been well-known for styling her hair in gorgeous Senegalese rope twists. When she lost all of her hair at the start of this year, she felt strongly that she should embrace her situation and her baldness, especially after the wigs she had tried weren’t helpful.

Although Rep. Pressley’s public announcement garnered a lot of positive awareness about the struggles that people with alopecia face every day, it also resulted in an equal amount of online bullying and trolling. Some vile people mockingly compared her to the Proctor & Gamble mascot known as “Mr. Clean.”

On February 6, fed up with this harassment, Rep. Pressley posted the following message on her official Twitter account along with a selfie of her looking entirely comfortable with her baldness: “Dear Trolls. You really think I look like “Mr. Clean”? Please. He never looked THIS clean. Sorry not sorry my unapologetically rockin’ my crown triggers you. Proud #alopecian.”

Rep. Pressley has proven yet again that she is a class act with or without hair.