Feminist, Fat, and Fabulous Blog: 43 Centimetres

I’ll interrupt the fashion and fabulous talk for a moment to focus Air France’s new policy.

For sanity reasons: Don’t read the comments. Never, ever read the comments. I’m serious. I know now people will end up reading them purely because I said not to, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I know this policy has been in place in US airlines for a while now. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. I think I come down on the side that it’s discriminatory.

How are they going to judge this? Are they going to look the passengers up and down and determine obesity? Make ‘em step on a scale before boarding? See a fatty eating some food and scream ‘NO FLYING FOR YOU, FATSO’ in a loud voice? How? Do they wait until before or after they’ve bought a ticket? Do you have to put your height and weight down when you’re booking?

I’d guess that most ‘obese’ people would probably choose to buy extra seats anyway, just like some taller people might choose to buy seats with more leg room. I’m not a frequent flyer (my first plane trip was last year for goodness sake!), so I don’t really know what the policy is on these sorts of things.

Forty-three centimetres is the average width of a plane seat, apparently. My arse isn’t overly large, yet I was struggling to feel much comfort sitting down on my short haul flight. I can’t imagine how bad it would be on a longer haul trip. I guess it’s probably more cost effective to charge extra for an extra seat for comfort and ‘safety’, and try to get as many customers on a plane as possible, rather than modify anything about the planes, the seating, or the herds of cattle, yeah?