Weight Maven

The other day, I got into a bit of a tiff on Facebook over the Kevin Smith – Southwest Airlines fiasco. Predictably, and sadly, the common response was “good for Southwest … it sucks having to sit next to fatties on planes.”

Well, two things. One is that Kevin Smith really wasn’t too fat to fly based on Southwest’s 25-year policy. He was able to sit in the seat, armrests down, seatbelt buckled without an extender. Based on his report — and the followup from the airline — it appears that Southwest’s policy is very subjective: you can be removed just because people appear to be leaning away from you!

So that sucks. And in predictable fashion, Southwest seems to have handled it poorly, but just as with the Whole Foods flap re health care reform, the half-life of the controversy will be relatively short (save for being included in examples of bad corporate responses as far as social media goes).

No, the real problem is the second point: it really sucks being a fatty who needs to fly. And I’m very saddened by all the haters leaving all the hateful comments in response to this story all over the interwebs. With 2/3rds of Americans overweight or obese, I gotta wonder. Don’t these people know someone — family member? friend? co-worker? — who is overweight or obese?

Where is the compassion? Apparently nowhere to be seen when it comes to being encroached on in a plane.

Not that I think it will change anything for the haters, but I was glad to read Kate Harding’s Kevin Smith: The face of flying while fat this morning:

See, those of us who are and/or love people to whom airlines’ “person of size policies” apply don’t automatically envision the discomfort of getting stuck next to a fatty; we envision the physical and emotional pain of being the fatty crammed between two potentially hostile strangers, at the mercy of flight attendants who might decide we’re fine on one flight and a “safety risk” on the next.

Harding does a great job of describing what it’s like for those of us who fear flying while fat: please do go read the whole thing.

What irritates me is how Southwest’s policy, and other airlines as well, makes this so much harder for fatties. It’s seriously no-win. Even if you can afford it, it’s ridiculously hard to actually buy and then fly with two seats — especially on an airline like Southwest, which doesn’t pre-assign seats. In fact, one of the contributing factors on Smith’s flight was that a passenger had bought two tickets and the flight attendants had to move others to accommodate that passenger, thus delaying departure from the gate and leaving the flight attendant perhaps a little stressed when it came to Smith’s situation.

As Harding notes, Southwest’s initial response didn’t help at all:

And then I read Southwest’s apology to Smith, which includes such gems as “If a Customer cannot comfortably lower the armrest and infringes on a portion of another seat, a Customer seated adjacent would be very uncomfortable and a timely exit from the aircraft in the event of an emergency might be compromised if we allow a cramped, restricted seating arrangement.” And I think, first, “If we allowed a cramped, restricted seating arrangement? Because ‘The Greyhound of the Skies’ is positively roomy when there are no fat people on board?” And second, I think, “Translation: Fat paying customers’ fully expected discomfort only becomes a problem for us if it also makes the paying customers we care about uncomfortable.”

But really, I get that people don’t want to be encroached on. Most of us don’t like encroaching either! Too bad all the focus is on us abhorrent fatties and not on the airlines for not better accommodating ALL their passengers. I might need more than one seat to avoid spilling over in the cattle car that passes for coach these days, but I don’t need two. Some airlines are providing optional seating for taller folks at a slight price increase. Why not for wider folks?

I’m afraid that they aren’t inclined to do so, mostly because at least half the population (the skinny folks and the fatties who can pass) are happy to reward the airlines for making it all about us fatties who cannot put down the Ding-Dongs.