A Woman Lied To About Having Cancer To Defend A Haircut & Many Survivors Say It's 'Justified'

No one likes getting unsolicited advice in the grocery store, especially when it’s a stranger who wants to criticize your haircut.

A woman on Reddit says she felt backed into a corner when a stranger did just that to her on a recent outing, and she’s now second-guessing her response.

The woman, 22, confessed that she lied about having cancer to get out of the awkward conversation, and so she turned to Reddit's r/AmITheA**hole community to find out if she did the wrong thing.

The woman explained that she had wanted to try a short haircut for years and she decided to finally go for it while visiting her boyfriend and his “free spirit” parents in a distant state.

"I felt amazing," she said about how she felt after getting the cut.

"The problem is, a few days later my trip was over and I had to head back to my home state, which is in a conservative area of the U.S."

She says she was prepared to deal with some backlash, but she didn’t expect a fifty-something woman to come after her about it at the grocery store.

She says the stranger approached her and asked "If I was worried about looking like a boy." The original poster says she responded "no," especially because she’s "curvy" and looks pretty feminine.

"She started to rant about how my parents should be ‘ashamed to let their daughter walk around like this’ and that it was sad to see someone who was ‘probably so beautiful and so feminine’ look like a ‘fat little boy.’"

Those comments pushed the Reddit user over the line, and in an angry, "spur of the moment" move, she played the cancer card.

"I told her she should be ashamed for talking about someone recovering from chemo like that," she wrote, and she then claimed she was recovering from ovarian cancer.

"She started backpedalling and trying to apologize, but I left her and my empty cart there and shrugged her off as she tried to follow me out the store," she wrote.

She says she told her roommate about it afterward and faced some backlash, plus she generally feels awful about the move. That’s why she turned to Reddit for advice.

Many Redditors quickly jumped in to say that she’s not an a**hole for faking her cancer diagnosis, if only because that stranger needed to be put in her place.

"This was not an ongoing lie to get sympathy, this was a claw back from a conservative woman who would not stop for any other reason," reads the top comment.

Others suggested that lie or not, the younger woman may have actually helped others with her reaction.

"This was so justified and may even make her think twice when she approaches someone who actually has/had cancer," read one comment.

"If a stranger is bugging you, you have every right to lie," said another.

"As someone who just finished cancer treatment, I applaud your answer," wrote someone else. "Maybe she’ll learn her lesson and leave the next person, an actual cancer patient, alone."

"Honey that woman was an a**hole," read another self-identified cancer survivor’s comment. "If you want to throw my diagnosis and experience at them you go ahead."

However, she didn't get off the hook entirely. Some self-identified survivors said they're not cool with anyone lying about the topic. One even gave her a "very gentle" a**hole ruling. "I have found a reply like, 'Well if you think I am going to hell for this I believe you are obligated to pray for me.' This usually shuts down the speaker and, in best case scenarios, makes them think a bit."

The original poster later came back to send her best wishes to the cancer survivors in the comments, and while her post is tilting toward a "not the a**hole" ruling, she's clearly still feeling bad and has learned a lesson.

"I didn't want to use someone else like a shield, I just couldn't think of what else to do. But I do appreciate your kind words."

This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.