Teacher Bae

Submission 46,209

About

Teacher Bae is a nickname given to Georgia-based paraprofessional educator Patrice Brown after photographs of her circulated online in mid September 2016. While some accused Brown of dressing inappropriately for an educator, other defended her choice of attire, claiming her body type was causing the online attention.

Origin

In early September 2016, Brown posted a photograph of herself wearing a form-fitting, pink-colored dress while standing in a classroom to Instagram^[14] (shown below). The original post has since been removed. On September 11th, Twitter user @Aneerinyourear^[13] tweeted the photograph. Over the next 24 hours, many Twitter users commented on the photograph, with some arguing that Brown's choice of attire was inappropriate for the classroom.

Spread

That day, people began defending Brown on Twitter in posts using the hashtag #teacherbae,^[2] including a tweet posted by @stackztootrill^[3] featuring a thin woman juxtaposed alongside Brown with the caption "I bet y'all wouldn't have nothing to say if she was built like this #teacherbae" (shown below, left). Meanwhile, Twitter user @FrankHoecean^[4] posted several photos Brown, saying "this black woman seems so happy & proud of teaching youth" (shown below, right). Within 72 hours, the tweets gathered upwards of 1,000 and 2,900 likes respectively.

Also on September 12th, The Daily Dot^[12] published an article about the trending hashtag, which included a statement from Brown:

"I just wish they would respect me and focus on the positive and what truly matters--which is educating the children of the future generations and providing and caring for them."

On September 13th, the @WorldStarC0medy^[11] feed joked about the large flat screen television seen in the background of the classroom photo (shown below, left). On September 14th, the @Hot97^[5] Twitter feed posted photographs of two ASOS models wearing the same dress as Brown, suggesting that Brown's body type was causing her to receive the attention online (shown below, right).

On September 13th, Atlanta Public Schools (APS) issued a statement that Brown had been “given guidance regarding the APS Employee Dress Code, the use of social media, and Georgia Code of Ethics for educators, and she has been cooperative in addressing her presence on social media."^[6] Over the coming days, various news sites published articles about the viral photograph, including UpRoxx,^[7] The Huffington Post,^[8] Complex^[9] and The Daily Mail.^[10]