A Muslim woman has revealed the rude question she claims an elderly man asked her at an aquarium.
Savannah, who was wearing a black-and-white hijab, claims the man asked her: “Are you dressed up as a penguin?”
The woman, who works at the aquarium in Sydney, explained what happened in a video posted on TikTok.
“Once he pointed that out, I was thinking ‘do I look like a penguin?’”
“I didn’t know what to say, so I was like ‘yeah, I’m a penguin’, cause like I thought he was joking, but he was dead serious.”
Savannah says the man later apologized to her.
“When he got to the end to the sales area I said to him ‘hey, I’m not a penguin by the way’ and he said ‘I’m so sorry, I realize that’,” she said.
Viewers were divided on the incident, with some saying the man was rude and others suggesting he may have meant it as an innocent joke.
One commenter said: “I’m sorry, that’s a grandpa joke. Not right, but sure it wasn’t malicious.”
Another wrote: “You should have said ‘I’m a nun’ to make him feel guilty.”
Another commented: “As a hijabi, I always try to avoid black with white because I’ve done it and they always think I’m a Catholic nun and call me sister.”
But one said: “I think he was trying to insult you and justify it by expecting you to insult him back. When you didn’t play along, he just felt bad.”