“It’s strange to be chastised like I’m a teenager when I’m 38,” Hilary Filipowicz tells PEOPLE
Hilary Flips/TikTok
Hilary Filipowicz
A woman is going viral after sharing her story of getting “chastised” for what she wore to a children’s story time at her local library.
Hilary Filipowicz says she was excited when she selected her outfit for an April 3 story hour at the Cleveland, Ohio-area library where she often takes her 3-year-old and 1-year-old daughters.
“Postpartum is a weird time — you never know what to wear, what fits,” the 38-year-old stay-at-home mom tells PEOPLE exclusively. “My closet contains three different sizes of clothes. Getting dressed is a fraught situation.”
So when she reached for a pair of high-waisted Topshop jeans (pants purchased, she says, in her “cool-girl, New York City era”) and realized they fit, she was thrilled.
“Those jeans are over a decade old,” she says with a laugh. “I was excited to fit into them.”
Paired with a basic tee and a long-sleeved cardigan that hits at the top of the jeans, Filipowicz looked, she thought, like any Millennial mom.
Until, that is, a librarian approached her and asked, “Are you a mom or a babysitter?”
When Filipowicz answered that she was a mom, the librarian told her, “You should know better” in what she described as a “judgey, tsk, tsk kind of tone.”
Thinking the librarian was referencing her children being too loud, Filipowicz says she “immediately started apologizing for my girls’ behavior.”
The librarian then interjected, “No, your outfit,” Filipowicz recalls.
In a TikTok video describing the situation, Filipowicz said the librarian then gestured to her sweater and jeans.
“And I realize it’s because [the sweater] is a little bit cropped and when I carry my giant 1-year-old, it raises up and shows maybe one inch of my mommy belly …. And apparently that’s inappropriate to show any midriff when you’re like edging into 40,” she says in the video. (Reps for the Cleveland Public Library did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.)
The video, which was shared shortly after she says she was “dress-coded” at the library, has since racked up more than 65,000 views and ignited viral conversation.
And while she was frustrated with the situation, Filipowicz says she isn’t interested in shaming the library or the librarian in question.
“I am such a library lover and we go multiple times per week,” she says. “My preschooler is obsessed with books and, as a mom, it’s hard to find free activities.”
She continues: “This particular library is one we go to a lot. So it’s strange to be chastised like I’m a teenager when I’m 38, especially considering I’m totally in my mom era. I would never do anything to make anyone uncomfy. My toddler is 30 pounds. I’m lugging her around and I’m not thinking about how my clothes are moving or what my body looks like in those moments.”
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Filipowicz says she shared the story initially as a sort of “temperature check” — “I wanted to ensure, you know, can I still wear this?”
In hindsight, it’s also offered Filipowicz a segue into discussing body confidence with her daughters.
“I want to teach my girls that what someone’s body is shaped like isn’t the most interesting thing about them,” she tells PEOPLE. “Before we leave the house, we now do a comfy check and a happy check — if you feel comfortable in what you’re wearing, that’s all that matters.”
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