Woman 'Fat-Shamed' During Flight Slams Co-Passenger, Open Letter Goes Viral

A mother wrote an open letter to a man who fat-shamed her on a Delta Air Lines plane, hoping he will get her message. Passenger Katie Kiacz claimed she was traveling on flight DL1723 from Orlando to Detroit when the incident took place.

In a now-deleted Facebook post, Kiacz said she saw an unidentified man texting someone, writing a message criticizing the woman for her weight.

“You referred to me as a ‘2-ton woman.’ You told your friend soon as I boarded and you saw me that it was ‘not good.’ When I confronted you saying ‘I am not two tons but I did just have a baby,’ you sighed and got up to use the bathroom then quietly asked the flight attendant for a different seat,” she wrote, Yahoo News reported. “I’m glad there were not any,” she wrote.

She went on to say that the man didn’t apologize or speak to her for the rest of the flight.

“I do not need your validation. So why am I posting? To call you out. Because I do not exist to please you. Because I will take up as much space as I want. Because even when confronted you did not think you were in the wrong, that you did not need to apologize,” the letter read. “I’m glad you had to sit next to me the entire two-hour flight, I’m only sorry I couldn’t take up more space.”

Expressing her disgust over the incident, Kiacz wrote: “As a woman, I am sick of this s----... Would he have said that had I been a man? Or had my daughter and husband with me? I don’t know. But women deal with these attitudes and behavior more than men, that I do know. And I. Am. Over. It.”

The woman also hashtagged the airline and the phrase “Call him out,” urging other women to come forward about similar incidents they may have faced.

“Oh, and this post is public,” she added. “I hope a woman in his life sees this and is able to explain to him why his behavior was inappropriate. Not that I think it’ll make a difference.”

According to Fox News, the post was shared 102,000 times and received over 85,000 comments before it was taken down. The reason why it was deleted remains unclear. Many people commented on the post expressing their support for Kiacz and sharing their own stories.

“The outpouring love and support has been unreal,” Kiacz later wrote on Facebook. “In that moment, I was shaking with anger, I was overcome by sadness, and for a moment I was ashamed and self-conscious,” she said, before adding she had to remind herself of "who I was, what I do, and how much I have accomplished and still have to accomplish."

“I think we have all said something unkind at one time or another, and this is just a reminder that we do not know the battles people are fighting and that we just need to be a little kinder to each other,” she added.