The popular video of a woman sending a message to firefighters while they were extinguishing a fire in a building managed to attract everyone’s attention this past weekend. The famous content creator @Ceciarmy published the small fragment on his social networks, in which we can hear the following words: ”Don’t go, the fire is not over. I’m burning. “Don’t go away handsome.”
After publication, the video managed to accumulate millions of views and countless comments with total disparity of opinions. Many claimed that the woman was very funny and that her words were very witty. But others, on the other hand, did not see the woman’s attitude at all well and compared it to what could have happened if those words had been said by a man and were addressed to a woman.
In a matter of hours, the video managed to cover every corner of the internet, becoming one of the most viral issues of the last few hours. But far from all the debate that was forming around it, the story behind the video was much more complex than it seemed at first glance.
And after all the media hype surrounding the recording, its protagonist, Mónica Chaparro, decided to come out publicly to explain the origin of the video. First she did it through her social networks, where she explained that the original audio was from three years ago and that now they had taken it again to put it in a totally different video. ”I don’t care if they take the audio and put another image on it. In fact, more than 3,000 women around the world have already done it. Women who have identified with the situation, but from laughter,’ she said.
Mónica Chaparro confessed that what had surprised her most was that there were people who still did not understand the video. ”Humor at the service of the feminist cause. Because it is still needed. We have suffered comments like this for decades. And it was always a lot of men yelling “things” or growling/hissing/bawling at a single woman. Intimidating her or making her speed up her pace. The firefighters were not scared. “They were doubled over with laughter,” she asserted.
Furthermore, from La Vanguardia we were able to speak with her to explain the true story behind the video. Mónica Chaparro declared that the real video was recorded in December 2020, just after she emerged from the pandemic, while she was walking through Guadalajara with a friend. But now that audio had been used in a video that had little to do with the real context. ”I’m amazed at the people who use it for purposes other than those of the videos,” she said.
Both she and her friend saw some firefighters on the street and wanted to reflect, through a completely improvised and humorous performance, what would happen if a woman complimented a man in the middle of the street. A situation that thousands of women have suffered over the years. The result was a totally humorous video, in which the firefighters laughed at the journalist’s words. ”I don’t objectify the firefighters, they are comfortable and this humorous video serves to complain about that situation,” she stated. ”I’m not disrespectful at any time, all the firefighters I’ve talked to thought it was good,” she said.
