Actress Jenny Mollen is itching to make sure everyone knows she didn’t realize she had head lice until she was already on her recent five-hour flight.
Mollen, whose husband is “American Pie” actor Jason Biggs, posted a video on Instagram two weeks ago from what appears to be a first-class airline seat with a clear plastic bag partially wrapped around her head. Her traveling companion, a woman named Caroline, looked in her hair to find she had lice, she said.
“ ‘I’m not saying for sure you have lice, I’m just saying there’s absolutely no way you don’t’ – Caroline,” the video’s caption reads. The woman, at one point, jokingly raises a privacy screen between them.
Mollen said she’d never had lice before, and blamed her itchy head on perimenopause, when a decrease in estrogen can lead to itchy, dry skin around the body. Mollen said her head had been itching for about two weeks at that point.
“And honestly, I think I know where I got it,” Mollen said in the video, holding back a laugh.”But I’m not gonna call that person out. But she knows who she is.”
Another video posted the next day showed Mollen receiving lice treatment, saying her home and two sons, Lazlo, 5, and Sid, 8, were also infested. Her husband got away with “like two eggs,” she said.
“The airplane seat — that’s a bummer for the person who sits there next,” she said in the follow-up video. “I want to be clear. I didn’t know I had lice until I was on the airplane.”
“Let’s just blame my husband for not looking closely enough at my head,” Mollen said. She said she asked Biggs to look at her scalp for lice prior to the flight, and he said he didn’t see anything.
Social media users voiced concern and disgust that she didn’t tell the airline what had happened so they could disinfect the seat for the next occupant.
“The world is on fire, but me finding out I had lice while stuck on an airplane (two weeks ago) is A TOP STORY,” Mollen said in an Instagram post Friday, commenting on People’s article about the incident.
It’s unclear how common head lice are, but they are most often seen in young children and their households, with an estimated 6 million to 12 million infestations a year in children between 3 and 11 years old, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lice are spread by direct contact with the hair or items that an infested person has used, like hats, combs, brushes, towels, pillows, beds or even stuffed animals.
Although head lice are not related to poor hygiene and are not considered a health hazard because they do not transmit disease, their presence can result in frequent scratching of the scalp, which can irritate the skin and lead to infection. Prescription and over-the-counter medications can treat infestations.
CDC guidance for children with head lice is not to send them home from school early but at the end of the day and return to class after treatment has begun.