Hannah Baker of '13 Reasons Why' started trending after a Twitter user joked about her 'fat a*s'
There’s no earthly reason why “Hannah Baker” should be trending on Twitter on April 11, 2020. The last episode of ‘13 Reasons Why’ season 3 aired almost eight months ago, and there has been no new news about the show either. So why was the protagonist of the first two seasons of the young-adult show, a dead teenager played by Katherine Langford, trending at this odd hour on Twitter? A little digging revealed it was because of one joke.
A Twitter user, for no apparent reason, tweeted, “Remember Hannah Baker got sad cuz they said she had a fat a*s.”
A little background, in case you’ve forgotten the show, haven’t watched it for any number of reasons, or wilfully tried to erase the contents of the Netflix series from your brain:
The series began in the aftermath of the death of Hannah, who committed suicide. But her memories would continue to haunt her classmates for a simple reason -- Hannah did not want them to forget how they all were responsible for her resorting to this finality. They had bullied her. In 13 tapes, Hannah recounted how different students bullied her, and how one student, Bryce Walker (Justin Prentice), a student from a rich family and the captain of the football team and pitcher on the baseball team of their high school, had raped not just her, but her friend as well.
And while Bryce was obviously the worst of the lot, several other students had bullied, slut-shamed, and sexually harassed her. Those included Marcus Cole (Steven Silver), her ex-boyfriend Justin Foley (Brandon Flynn), and her former best friend Alex Standall (Miles Heizer). Alex, the subject of one of the tapes, was accused by Hannah of breaking her friendship with Jessica Davis (Alisha Boe). There was a quote-unquote list that Alex had contributed to after his breakup with Jessica. To anger Jessica, because she didn't want to have sex with him, he listed Hannah as the student with the “best a*s”.
The list, and Hannah’s name on it, led to further harassment and slut-shaming. It was also cited by Bryce as one of the reasons why he wanted to get with her, before he proceeded to sexually assault her. Which makes the said tweet about Hannah on Saturday a pretty insensitive one.
Lots of people on Twitter pointed that out. But this wasn’t the first time someone had made a joke like this. Last year, following the “unpopular opinions” trend on Twitter, someone had posted an “Unpopular Opinion: 13 Reasons Why edition” tweet. In response to that, a user tweeted, “Hannah baker’s ass wasn't even fat.”
As one Twitter user pointed out for the hundreds making jokes on Hannah’s butt, “Hannah Baker is trending... this is a great time to remind you all that she killed herself bc she got sexually harassed, bullied, objectified, raped, lost her friends, and saw her friend get raped. She didn't just kill herself because ‘she got told she had a fat a*s’.”
The user further wrote, “I know it’s a tv show. y’all don’t have to tell me a million times lmao. I’m just stating why she did it.”
'13 Reasons Why', even the first season of the show, received its fair share of criticism, especially its graphic portrayal of suicide and what many have claimed, its glorification of suicide, but criticizing the show is not the same as trivializing the fate of one of its characters. Especially the harassment she faced, fictional or not.