A couple of days ago (on Valentine’s day, in fact), Kevin Smith was kicked off a Southwest Airlines plane for being ‘too fat to fly.’ You can read the details on Kevin’s blog, if you haven’t already been following the debacle on Twitter (I say debacle in seriousness– Twitter crashed at least twice last night as a result of ‘too many tweets’).
This isn’t a post about that occurrence specifically, mostly because it’s already been hashed out to death but also because Smith’s whole point is that he doesn’t actually qualify as too fat to fly; he fits in the seat with the armrests down and the seatbelt buckled, unextended. What I want to talk about is the policy, held by multiple airlines, that those ‘customers of size’ (I think I threw up a little just now) who can’t fit in the seat with the armrests down must purchase two seats at full price.
Look, I get it. It sucks to have someone encroaching on your space, especially on an airplane, where space is already at such a premium. I’ve been there. I’ve sat next to huge dudes who take up not only the whole armrest but also a good 4 inches of my side past it with their hammy arms. I’ve also sat next to really tall people whose legs come a full foot (no pun intended) into my legroom. They can’t help it. Either party.
On a recent 10-hr flight across the Atlantic, I sat behind a family of three who had the whole bulkhead row. The minute the plane was in the air, the mother commandeered a whole OTHER row to lie down in, while the father immediately put his seat all the way back into my space. The kid, meanwhile, turned on his ipod touch and started playing a video game at full volume. I curled up with my headphones in and tried to get some sleep. This was not to be. Dad was super antsy, bouncing around in his seat (which stayed all the way back the entire flight, even when he moved for 2 hours to sit with a business friend and conduct a conference at full volume with the cabin lights out), and the kid played games, off and on, the whole time too. At one point I went to the bathroom and passed the mom, sleeping peacefully in her very own row while her beastly family terrorized the front of the cabin. I nearly bit her.
What I’m saying is that flying coach blows. Always. It’s scary and dangerous (if you’re afraid of it, as I am) and hideously uncomfortable. You’re surrounded by other people, which inevitably means rudeness and self-absorption abound. Granted, sitting next to a fat person makes it that much worse, but to be honest I’d take a row of elephants before I’d sit anywhere NEAR that family again (seriously, I didn’t want to take up another paragraph describing them, but I totally could have). Most fat people I’ve sat next to (and this was true of me too when I was fat) do their damndest to fold inward– one guy spent the entire flight with his arms crossed, which couldn’t have been good for his circulation but made my life a little easier.
What I’m saying is not that we have to ignore the fact of heavier people encroaching on other people’s space on planes. I do think it’s a problem, and I think something should be done about it (to be fair, though, I’d like to have a federal rudeness marshal on every flight too). But what shouldn’t be allowed is blind discrimination and unfair costs.
Buying two seats is WAY over the top. At most, a ‘customer of size’ (yelch) should have to pay for one and a half seats. If the airlines insist on making seats smaller and smaller, then it’s totally unfair for them to expect larger people to cough up twice the fare for one flight.
I think the answer is to face the facts: people are made in different shapes and sizes. Why not design airplanes accordingly? Why not have a couple of rows of larger seats? Maybe a few with narrow seat but more legroom? And then charge more (but not TWICE THE FARE) for those seats? Hell, I’d pay more to be able to sit cross-legged in my seat.
Flying is never going to be comfortable or fun again (in coach). I’ve accepted that. But there are things the airlines could be doing to make people like me HATE THEM LESS and make people like Kevin Smith feel respected by them.
For me, the crux of the issue is this: fat is the last physical characteristic on which it’s allowable to discriminate. It’s unthinkable to whine about the person next to you with the oxygen tank that takes up your floorspace, or the dude across the aisle who doesn’t deodorize for religious reasons and therefore smells like an exhausted yak, but the fat guy in the window seat is fair game because “it’s his fault he’s fat.” Regardless of your opinion on fault (I think you know mine), the truth is there’s nothing he can do about it in a short time period. Stinkbomb could shower, oxygen lady could put the tank on her lap, but fatty fatty 2 by 4 isn’t going to be able to magically drop 200 pounds in the month between buying his ticket and boarding the plane.
Which means that basically what all the people out there on the side of discrimination are saying is that fat people just shouldn’t be able to fly. These comments always have a tone of “well, I’m sorry, but that’s just your punishment for being fat.” It’s so smug and self-righteous that I could spit. And I’d bet everything I have that people who make such thoughtless comments have never been fat. They’ve probably had to lose 10 pounds for a reunion and think that’s the same, though.
Ok, before I work myself up way too much, I’ll condense my thoughts to this one sentence: I understand both sides, and I know there’s a problem, but scapegoating fat people is not the solution.
It’s the airlines that have screwed us into these tiny corners of space. Maybe instead of airing our revulsion about fat we should be grabbing our torches and pitchforks and advancing on the people who design these ridiculous metal money-cages!
This isn’t a post about that occurrence specifically, mostly because it’s already been hashed out to death but also because Smith’s whole point is that he doesn’t actually qualify as too fat to fly; he fits in the seat with the armrests down and the seatbelt buckled, unextended. What I want to talk about is the policy, held by multiple airlines, that those ‘customers of size’ (I think I threw up a little just now) who can’t fit in the seat with the armrests down must purchase two seats at full price.
Look, I get it. It sucks to have someone encroaching on your space, especially on an airplane, where space is already at such a premium. I’ve been there. I’ve sat next to huge dudes who take up not only the whole armrest but also a good 4 inches of my side past it with their hammy arms. I’ve also sat next to really tall people whose legs come a full foot (no pun intended) into my legroom. They can’t help it. Either party.
On a recent 10-hr flight across the Atlantic, I sat behind a family of three who had the whole bulkhead row. The minute the plane was in the air, the mother commandeered a whole OTHER row to lie down in, while the father immediately put his seat all the way back into my space. The kid, meanwhile, turned on his ipod touch and started playing a video game at full volume. I curled up with my headphones in and tried to get some sleep. This was not to be. Dad was super antsy, bouncing around in his seat (which stayed all the way back the entire flight, even when he moved for 2 hours to sit with a business friend and conduct a conference at full volume with the cabin lights out), and the kid played games, off and on, the whole time too. At one point I went to the bathroom and passed the mom, sleeping peacefully in her very own row while her beastly family terrorized the front of the cabin. I nearly bit her.
What I’m saying is that flying coach blows. Always. It’s scary and dangerous (if you’re afraid of it, as I am) and hideously uncomfortable. You’re surrounded by other people, which inevitably means rudeness and self-absorption abound. Granted, sitting next to a fat person makes it that much worse, but to be honest I’d take a row of elephants before I’d sit anywhere NEAR that family again (seriously, I didn’t want to take up another paragraph describing them, but I totally could have). Most fat people I’ve sat next to (and this was true of me too when I was fat) do their damndest to fold inward– one guy spent the entire flight with his arms crossed, which couldn’t have been good for his circulation but made my life a little easier.
What I’m saying is not that we have to ignore the fact of heavier people encroaching on other people’s space on planes. I do think it’s a problem, and I think something should be done about it (to be fair, though, I’d like to have a federal rudeness marshal on every flight too). But what shouldn’t be allowed is blind discrimination and unfair costs.
Buying two seats is WAY over the top. At most, a ‘customer of size’ (yelch) should have to pay for one and a half seats. If the airlines insist on making seats smaller and smaller, then it’s totally unfair for them to expect larger people to cough up twice the fare for one flight.
I think the answer is to face the facts: people are made in different shapes and sizes. Why not design airplanes accordingly? Why not have a couple of rows of larger seats? Maybe a few with narrow seat but more legroom? And then charge more (but not TWICE THE FARE) for those seats? Hell, I’d pay more to be able to sit cross-legged in my seat.
Flying is never going to be comfortable or fun again (in coach). I’ve accepted that. But there are things the airlines could be doing to make people like me HATE THEM LESS and make people like Kevin Smith feel respected by them.
For me, the crux of the issue is this: fat is the last physical characteristic on which it’s allowable to discriminate. It’s unthinkable to whine about the person next to you with the oxygen tank that takes up your floorspace, or the dude across the aisle who doesn’t deodorize for religious reasons and therefore smells like an exhausted yak, but the fat guy in the window seat is fair game because “it’s his fault he’s fat.” Regardless of your opinion on fault (I think you know mine), the truth is there’s nothing he can do about it in a short time period. Stinkbomb could shower, oxygen lady could put the tank on her lap, but fatty fatty 2 by 4 isn’t going to be able to magically drop 200 pounds in the month between buying his ticket and boarding the plane.
Which means that basically what all the people out there on the side of discrimination are saying is that fat people just shouldn’t be able to fly. These comments always have a tone of “well, I’m sorry, but that’s just your punishment for being fat.” It’s so smug and self-righteous that I could spit. And I’d bet everything I have that people who make such thoughtless comments have never been fat. They’ve probably had to lose 10 pounds for a reunion and think that’s the same, though.
Ok, before I work myself up way too much, I’ll condense my thoughts to this one sentence: I understand both sides, and I know there’s a problem, but scapegoating fat people is not the solution.
It’s the airlines that have screwed us into these tiny corners of space. Maybe instead of airing our revulsion about fat we should be grabbing our torches and pitchforks and advancing on the people who design these ridiculous metal money-cages!
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