Dear Jessika,
Please accept this as my formal resignation from the role of big hat you wear in every photo you post on Instagram. I am grateful for all the experience I have gained; however, I feel it is necessary to share why I’ve chosen to leave my position.
When I initially became your hat, my primary job was to block the sun from your eyes and occasionally to hide a bad hair day, but, as your Instagram usage began to increase, so did my responsibilities.
My role became more demanding when you began wearing me in near-daily pics of you in a white linen dress, posed on a wicker chair, surrounded by forty-seven plants. These photos were often paired with captions about “manifesting your dreams” and “dreaming about manifestation.” Soon, you began taking me on location shoots, like the one at the pumpkin patch. I’ll never forget the look on that child’s face when you shoved him out of the way so you could get the perfect shot of you sipping a pumpkin-spice latte.
Then there were the photos that we took together at the wildflower field. I’ll never forget the look on that other child’s face when you shoved her out of the way so you could get the perfect shot of you lying in the meadow. I assume you weren’t aware that lying on top of wildflowers kills them, since your post was all about Earth Day.
And, of course, there was the time we stopped by the Women’s March for ten minutes so that you could get a pic of us with your “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like” tee, making the peace sign. I’ll never forget the look on that child’s face when you shoved him out of the way to pose with a dog dressed like R.B.G. You wrote a really long caption for that one about women’s rights, even though my label indicates that I was made in a sweatshop in Honduras. I gave you the benefit of the doubt because, despite constantly referring to yourself as a “girl boss,” “lady boss,” and “boss babe,” you’ve never had a real job, and so probably don’t know that fast fashion is often made by female garment workers forced to work in dangerous conditions for very low wages.
Despite my discomfort about what was starting to feel like faux activism, I continued to be your hat for another three hundred and seventeen highly curated, heavily edited photos, including many excessively intimate ones chronicling your pregnancy. You’d wear me as you held your belly and posed, gazing at the sunset, ocean, and/or mountains. You’d always caption those photos with a quote from Maya Angelou or Oprah Winfrey, paired with a Black fist emoji even though you are white. So very, very, very white.
I was excited when you made your unborn fetus its own Instagram account, because I hoped that it might buy me a little break from the spotlight. I mean, I thought it was weird that your sonogram pics had captions written as if your unborn child was saying them, such as “In my mama’s belly and it’s a vibe,” and “Buy my mommy’s essential oils.” But, whatever, that account had, like, a hundred thousand followers, so I guess people are into that sort of thing? All I know is that if I were a human and saw that an unborn fetus had more followers than me, I’d feel really bad about myself.
Then you did something that shook me to my core—you wore me (along with a full face of makeup) immediately after delivering your baby, in your post-water-birth photos. After that, everything really went downhill for me. Every day became you, standing in front of yet another urban mural, trying to make sure that baby Willow Amethyst Yoni Rose Dove didn’t yank me off your head, as you yelled at your husband, “Just take the fucking picture, Gary!”
The final straw was when you took me, the baby, Gary, and your four Labradoodles to that farm, so you could get pics of you breastfeeding while walking through pampas grass. No one—and I mean no one—breastfeeds while walking in tall grasses, especially not in cowboy boots, white linen, and me, a hat so big that you can’t even see your child’s face. Now, I’m no marriage expert, nor am I a parenting expert. I am merely felt and glue, but I feel as though your priorities are a bit skewed. I understand that receiving a fire emoji from someone named Junkmonkey825 is really important to you, but I just think that our values are no longer aligned, and probably never were. All I ever wanted as a hat was to help add a little pizzazz to someone’s outfit, not to add stress to your followers’ lives because they can’t live up to your curated existence.
If you need to discuss anything further, you can find me at the local church clothing drive, where I hope that a nice, elderly woman with a flip phone will snatch me up and wear me for gardening.
Sincerely,
Wide-Brimmed Hat
