An actress and best-selling author has been slammed by her followers on social media after admitting to flying on a five-hour transcontinental flight with United Airlines, while she was infected with head lice.
Jenny Mollen, who has appeared in a number of hit television shows and has written two New York Times bestsellers, shared the news in a post on Instagram, which she captioned: “I’m not saying for sure you have lice, I’m just saying there’s absolutely no way you don’t.”
In a short video taken while she was sitting in United’s Polaris Business Class cabin, Jenny provided lots more details, explaining:
“Guys, I’m on a plane with Caroline, and she just looked at my head and remember when we told last week that I said that my head was itching, and I thought I was having like perimenopause symptoms, well guess what I have f**king lice, and honestly I think I know where I got it, but I’m not going to call that person out, but she knows who she is.
“I can’t even deal,” Jenny continued. “This is insane, you guys, this is insane. We have a five-hour flight. I’m wearing like a bag that these came in [pointing to a set of headphones] on my head. I’ve never had lice in my life. I don’t know what to do. I’ve been itching for two weeks, so they’ve been living on me for two weeks.”
Despite Jenny’s quite frank honesty, many of her followers were not particularly happy with her decision to go out in public with an active lice infection.
One wrote in response to her video: “Classless in first class,” while another spelled out the problem, writing: “Well, I certainly would not be on a plane with untreated lice announcing it. Not cool.”
Other commentators also didn’t hold back, telling Jenny that she had unlocked a new fear of flying for them.
“I will NEVER not wear a hoodie when I fly now,” one wrote. “Thank you for introducing a brand new fear of mine now – catching lice on a plane.”
Another poster wrote: “What the actual lice?!? Why are you on an airplane!?? You should notify an attendant so they can bring the hazmat crew in after you to clean up!”
But in a live Q&A posted a few days later, Jenny responded to a post about choosing to fly, saying: “The airplane seat… that’s a bummer for whoever sits there next. I didn’t know, I want to be clear, I didn’t know that I had lice until I got on the airplane.”
“I thought I was going through perimenopause, and let’s just blame my husband for not looking closely enough at my head.”
“For the entire flight from LA to New York, I was wearing a plastic bag on my head and was freaking out, knowing that I was going to have to come home and boil my entire house.”
Although head lice are highly contagious, they spread primarily through head-to-head contact, and experts believe that the risk of catching lice off another passenger on an airplane is relatively low.
That being said, lice can survive on seatbacks for between 24 to 48 hours, so passengers could theoretically be infected from a previous customer depending on how well the cleaning crews have done their job.
