Jade Hameister: The Clap Back Queen
16- year -old, Jade Hameister is the youngest person to ever complete the Polar Hat-Trick by reaching the North and South Poles and crossing Greenland. This Australian Explorer is as bad ass as it gets, but even she has to deal with misogynistic critics who have given their unwarranted opinion that her place is in the kitchen. In 2016, after Jade became the youngest person to ski to the North Pole from outside the last degree of latitude (give or take 60 miles), she gave a TEDx talk in Melbourne where she encouraged young women to embrace having an adventurous mindset, and to stray away from societal pressures that discourage girls from their ambitions. After her TEDx Talk went viral, men on YouTube flooded her page with comments like, “Make me a sandwich,” and other internet memes that mocked women for having ambitions aside from making food for a man.
Hameister’s recent record-setting voyage to the South Pole sparked the ambitious go-getter's sharp response to her critics with a Facebook post where she posed next to the Ceremonial South Pole flags while carrying a sandwich on a plate.
LOL! This is my type of petty.
“I skied back to the Pole again … to take this photo for all those men who commented ‘Make me a sandwich’ on my TEDX Talk,” she wrote. “I made you a sandwich (ham & cheese), now ski 37 days and 600km to the South Pole and you can eat it xx.”
BOOM! May I just say this I the best response I've heard from a teenage girl to-date. Girls like this make me proud to be a woman. Instead of letting so many rude comments discourage her, she did better than ever and clapped back at her haters. What a Boss.
Aside from making fun of internet trolls, Hameister spoke with ABC Radio Melbourne’s Jon Faine about the struggles, and enjoyment of her journey.
“It’ll be tough sitting in a classroom,” she explained. “I’m not really fussed about the records as much as they’re cool to have. For me it’s just the experience and the environment that no one else really gets to see.”
Jade also talked about how she likes to tune out the pain and fatigue of the journey by listening to music, but her music player broke down on just the ninth day of her trip south. The strength and tenacity of Jade is something we can all use as motivation when we feel we can't when we can.
“I had 28 days, almost 300 hours, of just the voice in my head and that was probably one of the hardest parts of the trip because I didn’t have that distraction,” Hameister recalled. “I think when you’re really struggling there’s a lot of negative messages that your head is telling you and that can make it really hard.”
A documentary of her journey to the South Pole from National Geographic is slated to be released later this year.
