Shine OnPenny Loker: Ontario woman becomes internet star after email to CNN defends people with facial disfigurements
When Penny Loker, 31, wrote to the CNN to tell them she was disappointed in their "viewer discretion" warning on a photo gallery, she didn't expect to become an internet star.
Loker, a resident of Waterloo, Ont., was upset by CNN's warning on a gallery which showed Vietnamese children with facial disfigurements due to Agent Orange.
Loker was born with two birth conditions -- hemifacial miscrosomia and Goldenhar syndrome -- both of which cause parts of a person's face to be underdeveloped, particularly the ear, jaw and cheek.
According to Loker's personal blog, the CNN warning said:
“Warning: the following photographs contain graphic content of severely deformed children. Viewer discretion is advised.”
Loker felt that the warning was shaming people with facial disfigurements.
"I am 'deformed' and reading that view discretion warning ahead of the article was amount to telling me that every time I leave the house I should wear a similar warning," she writes on her blog.
Part of her email to CNN said, "How can I not speak up about this? If not me, who will speak on behalf of these children?"
As a result of Loker's unhappiness and her email, the news broadcaster subsequently changed the gallery warning.
“I didn’t expect anything. I just sent it off, thought it would just go into cyberspace, never to be heard from again,” Loker tells CBC.
"What happened next has changed my life," she writes on her blog.
In addition to changing the wording on the photo gallery CNN also wrote a feature story on her, with an editor's note explaining the context of how the broadcaster came to know her.
CBC reports that Loker has received an outpour of support from Facebook, Twitter and email since her story broke.
"She estimates she has somewhere between 200-300 new followers as a result of her story. CNN invited her to do a Facebook chat on their page on Thursday night."
This is the first time Loker has stuck up for people with facial disfigurements and she says she doesn't see herself as an activist.
"I don’t know if it’s really sunk in yet," she tells the CBC.
