Some might resent a photo of their morning commute landing on millions of screens across the world, especially if that photo depicted them making an explicit hand gesture.
But Fiona, a 14-year-old freshman at Champlain Valley Union High School, is embracing her 15 minutes of fame after an image of her giving the middle finger to two anti-mask protesters through a school bus window caught fire on social media over the weekend.
The image — which was published Friday by VTDigger — quickly spread across platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, garnering millions of views and reactions.
“It’s crazy,” said Fiona, who asked VTDigger not to publish her last name because of threats directed against her on social media. “It’s weird to see people from all different countries posting about it.”
For days before the encounter, Fiona had watched the protesters waving signs with messages such as “The mask is not the cure” as her bus took a left turn into the school’s parking lot. But she didn’t give them the bird until Friday morning, she said.
“I was honestly just kind of annoyed with it,” Fiona said of her decision to flip off the protesters.
As Fiona raised her middle finger, Glenn Russell — a photojournalist for VTDigger — lowered his index finger, triggering the shutter of his camera and capturing the reaction in sharp focus.
Russell said he wasn’t trying to get the finger in the photo.
“I was just locking focus on the school buses as they were driving by the protesters,” Russell said. “All the ingredients came together.”
Neither Fiona nor Russell thought much of the moment until Saturday morning, when each received a message. For Fiona, it was an email from a past science teacher saying she was proud of her former pupil. For Russell, it was a text from his wife, with a screenshot of a viral Tweet sharing the image.
This photo should win a pulitzer https://t.co/A95V4PAwL7 pic.twitter.com/x63VF4AqKQ
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) September 4, 2021
“This photo should win a [P]ulitzer,” wrote Philip Lewis, a senior front page editor for HuffPost, referring to the award commonly viewed as the crown of journalistic accomplishment.
Russell thinks the photo is “solid,” he said, but not his best work.
“If it hadn’t created the reaction it created, I would have thought of it as an unexceptional photograph,” he said. “Just another day’s take and on to the next assignment.”
That kid gives me hope. That kid says we got this, back off! That kid says the hostile environment you’re creating is 100 times worse than this little mask! God I love that kid! ✊? https://t.co/RhLvurpGtG
— Vaxxed AF! #TeamPfizer Poor Kid Chasing Dreams. (@DaveBautista) September 5, 2021
Still, the 100,000 likes on Lewis’ Tweet made Russell’s photo a shot seen round the internet. Twitter influencers soon began to share the image, with actor and former pro wrestler Dave Bautista offering to help fund Fiona’s college tuition.
“That kid gives me hope,” the Avengers star wrote. “That kid says the hostile environment you’re creating is 100 times worse than this little mask!”
While Fiona appreciates Bautista’s offer, she and her mother, Meagan Downey, aren’t looking to cash in on the opportunity.
“We view it as people just expressing their support,” Downey, who has a different surname than her daughter, wrote in a text.
But not every social media commenter was as friendly as Bautista. Downey told VTDigger that, when someone remarked on Instagram that Fiona was “going places,” another user replied, “Straight to the ER.”
Despite the threat, Fiona said she didn’t regret flipping off the protesters, though she was anxious about what awaited her at school after the long weekend.
“I’m kind of scared to go to school tomorrow,” she said in an interview Monday night. “I don’t know what people’s reactions will be like. I don’t think anyone’s going to be angry at me or anything, but I just don’t know what it’s going to be like.”
Downey shared Fiona’s concern, though she stands by her daughter’s reaction to the demonstrators, calling it understandable given the circumstances.
“The pandemic has been hard on us all in many ways, but for adolescents in particular,” Downey said. “They have the awareness to have been seeing everything that’s been going on and don’t have the agency or control to change it.”
“And this was a moment when my daughter had some control over what her hand was doing to express herself,” Downey said.
