02-15-2010
04:01 PM
I'm an overweight woman who travels regularly but rarely with Southwest, so my telling you that I won't ever fly Southwest again will do very little to affect your bottom line. But I won't ever fly Southwest again (and I'll encourage my parents, who are thinner than I am but still chubby and who *are* regular Southwest flyers, to boycott you, too). This incident with Kevin Smith has made visible a real fear that many overweight people have: that they're going to be called out--publicly, without warning and without recourse--and punished and humiliated for their weight. Kevin Smith has articulated one of my worst travel nightmares, and I simply won't put myself in a position to be humiliated by an insensitive staff. That I fit "comfortably" into the seat (the seat belt buckles and the arm rest goes down easily, without coaxing) is beside the point. What if one day one of your staff members looks at me and says, "You're out"?
And to those of you who think that flying is uncomfortable only because you're sitting next to a fat passenger? What planet are you on? My 5'11-180-pound brother and my 5'10-150-pound boyfriend complain as loudly as I do about how miserable they are on the plane. People who kick the back of your chair, people who recline their seat into your lap, children who cry and scream, people who bring on stinky food, people who take an eternity to put their carry-ons in the overhead, people who blast their headphones so their neighbors hear the tinny tin tin or their music--just about everyone's miserable! On my last flight (JFK to SFO), the man on the aisle gave me (window) and my neighbor (middle) are hard time about getting up so that we could use the restroom! And plenty of skinny or average-sized men have laid claim to the armrest for the entire flight. I think most of them would be stunned to realize what they've done and are doing. Me? I think the armrest belongs to the person sitting in the middle.
Thanks to Kevin Smith for speaking out.
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