Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) clapped back Thursday at trolls who targeted her Twitter account with comments about her appearance after the congresswoman revealed publicly that she has alopecia.
Pressley rebuked Twitter users who had apparently suggested a resemblance to Mr. Clean, the bald mascot of Proctor & Gamble’s line of cleaning supplies.
Pressley, a member of “The Squad” of four progressive freshman congresswomen, publicly revealed her alopecia in an interview with The Root in January in which she described how her condition worsened last fall.
“Every night I was employing all the tools that I had been schooled and trained in throughout my life as a Black woman because I thought that I could stop this. I wrapped my hair. I wore a bonnet. I slept on a silk pillowcase,” she said at the time.
“I’m very early in my alopecia journey. But I’m making progress every day. And that’s why I’m doing this today,” she added. “It’s about self agency. It’s about power. It’s about acceptance. It’s so interesting to me that right now on this journey, what I feel the most unlike myself is when I am wearing a wig. So I think that means I’m on my way.”