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A Woman Used Menopause as an Excuse for Not Wearing a Mask: Should We Be Mad?

When the flight attendant asked her to keep her mask on, she played the menopause card. Could she have a point, or is this laughable reasoning that hurts us all?

Ok, we get it. Menopause is hard, with all the sweating and the brain fog and that desire to rip someone’s head off that surfaces at the most inopportune times. But it’s not a reason to go without a mask. Anyone who claims that is making menopausal women look fragile or, worse, like a so-called Karen (even though we hate that term, as we explained here).

Unfortunately that’s just what a woman did last month on a Jet Blue flight out of West Palm Beach, Florida. Before take off, when asked to keep her mask covering her face, she first said she couldn’t because she was scared of flying and this was her first time flying alone. Then, when a flight attendant kept catching her with the mask off, she played the menopause card.

The result? The woman was eventually removed from the airplane in handcuffs, plus, all passengers had to get off as well. This led to a three-hour delay in the flight. Can you imagine how angry the other passengers were?

Read More: Fashion and Face Masks: The Only Accessory We Care About Right Now

Reasons for Not Wearing Masks

“While medical exemptions to the mask rule do exist, fear of flying and menopause are probably not two of the valid exceptions,” wrote travel blogger Matthew Klint.

I mean, have you had a menopausal hot flash? Just sayin’?

The comments on the Tiktok account of the passenger who posted a video of the incident were brutal. In addition to some jabs at the state of Florida, the comments followed the general theme of how tiresome non-mask-wearers are, and in this case, how selfish, since the woman’s stance impacted hundreds of people.

A couple of women commented directly on her menopause rationale. Someone named Heather, “a woman in menopause with a former fear of flying,” advised the woman to “go to your doctor and get a prescription for any one of many anti-anxiety meds that can be taken in very small doses on an as-needed basis.”

A commenter named Suz tried to make a joke: “I mean, have you had a menopausal hot flash? Just sayin’?” Then she thought better of it, since humor is so often lost in the battlefield of social media. “(That’s a JOKE, before anyone thinks I am defending her),” Suz added. We like how women like Suz, with her sense of humor, are counterbalances to women like the anti-masker who cried menopause.

By NextTribe Editors

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