On February 13th, Kevin Smith was asked to vacate his seat on a Southwest airlines flight, on account of being “too fat” to fly. Smith is a very successful director, and when he decided to use Twitter to register his complaint at Southwest’s atrocious behaviour, he reached millions. In a series of tweets, he expressed his anger at having been subjected to Southwest’s Guidelines for Customers of Size, and people listened.
This is what Smith had to say:
“Wanna tell me I’m too wide for the sky? Totally cool but fair warning folks: If you look like me, you may be ejected from Southwest. I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated? Hey @SouthwestAir? F*ck making it right for me just ’cause I have a platform. I sat next to a big girl who was chastised for not buying an extra ticket because “all passengers deserve their space.” F*cking flight wasn’t even full! F*ck your size-ist policy.”
The age of social media means that corporations are no longer able to put a spin on incidents like this. Once a story goes viral, it gains a life of its own. Had this occurred to a passenger without celebrity status, it would simply be chalked up to (largely acceptable) prejudice against amorphous fat people, and forgotten about.
Kevin Smith is a man with over one million Twitter followers, however, and suddenly, the human element in this story was brought to life. Kevin is funny, successful and engaging, and is the opposite of the stereotypes attached to fatness. Many were able to quickly realize that the way he was treated was unacceptable. It is much harder to discriminate against someone once we have come to like them as much as we like Kevin Smith.
Overall, though, fat-shaming is everywhere we turn. It happens in the erasure of fat bodies from the media. Women who are average weight are routinely photo-shopped to appear slimmer. Fat people earn less than skinny people, even though there is no substantial evidence that they are less competent. Doctors routinely ignore the medical complaints of fat people and assume that every illness or complaint is weight-related, even when the patient and medical evidence indicate otherwise.
We have been socialized to believe that fat is always the problem. If you cannot get a boyfriend, the answer is to lose weight. If you want to be successful in life, lose weight. The answer is always “lose weight.”
Michelle Obama recently announced the Let’s Move Campaign with the goal of eliminating childhood obesity within a generation. The New York Times quotes her:
“The truth is, our kids didn’t do this to themselves. Our kids didn’t choose to make food products with tons of fat and sugar and supersize portions, and then to have those foods marketed to them wherever they turn. There is a place in this life for cookies and ice cream and burgers and fries, that is a part of childhood. This is just about balance, about really small changes that can add up, like walking to school when you can, replacing soda with water or skim milk, trimming portions just a little.”
The initiative started by the Obama administration reifies the idea that fat should be a marker of our status. Though the administration claims that the initiative is to improve overall health, the fixation on fast food and portion size as the cause of obesity is highly unscientific. The greatest predictor for body shape, size and ability to fight disease is genetics. Just as it is possible to be fat and physically fit, it is also possible to be skinny and unhealthy. There are many that regularly consume diets high in fat and sugar, and yet their BMI falls within the so-called healthy range.
The First Lady’s platform is being run alongside of president Obama’s attempt to overhaul the health care system. When the anti-childhood obesity campaign is placed next to the healthcare debate, it helps reinforce the notion of what as a disease. High blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes are constantly mentioned in the two conversations, with a connection always made between these health issues and fat, thereby marking fat bodies as problematic and a drain upon society.
On a state level, the Mississippi legislature has considered a bill to ban obese people from eating at restaurants. Bill HB,282 specifically states:
“Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor.”
A person is considered to be obese if their BMI measures 30 and above. Of course, it was never made clear how the restaurants would decide if a patron should be banned from eating. This bill has been promoted as a way of “helping” fat people deal with their weight issues, when all it would do is isolate and humiliate them. It is nothing short of an attempt at legalized discrimination.
When discrimination becomes law, where do we draw the line? If fatness can be criminalized and legally understood as deviant there is nothing to stop the government from deciding tomorrow that people who are old, gay, transgendered, of colour, etc., are also in need of segregation to ensure their own development.
Meanwhile, Southwest has apologized for inconveniencing Smith, but its discriminatory policy remains unchanged, which means other, not-so-famous people will continue to suffer.
Like all news stories, this too will slowly lose its momentum, to be replaced by some other shocking example of discrimination, even as fat-shaming continues to become a systemic part of our society. Kevin Smith is just one of many people who have been thrown under the bus in this brave new world.
i applaud the stand southwest has taken. It is not discrimination against someone that takes up 2 seats to have to pay for the 2nd. i am a frequent traveler, and there have been numerous times that I have had to sit on a 2 hour flight (not southwest) turned sideways because the person next to me was overhanging onto my area. I am not saying it is right to treat everweight people badly, but if an airline cant sell a seat next to an overweight person, that is a fare that they are losing.
Renee, I’ve been following your writing for awhile and admire much of what you have to say. I grew up with an extremely overweight father, and watched him struggle with a lot of what you’ve mentioned above.
However, I have to take issue with your characterization of the Southwest policy as discriminatory, or at least ask how you would apply it in a less discriminatory way if you were running the airline. Not a perfect comparison by any account, but I am uncomfortable in most airline seats for terribly long because I’m very tall. At the same time, I recognize that air travel is cheap because they jam as many seats into a plane as possible. I don’t expect the entire industry to change because of my size.
If a “customer of size,” as Southwest puts it, must raise the armrest and take part of the seat of a neighboring passenger, who is then able to use less than 100 percent of a seat despite paying 100 percent of the fare, what is the solution? How is it fair for the neighboring passenger, and how is it unfair to charge someone who takes up more than one seat for more than one seat? If Southwest lets a larger passenger use more than one seat if the flight isn’t full, I don’t understand the objection?
What kind of person throws SILENT BOB off a plane?
I’m sure that’s really, really unlucky!
(PS: Great post, Renee!)
I am lucky in that I have the metabolism of an enraged ferret. I could eat deep fried doughnuts all day and not gain weight (I don’t, but still) and equally i have friends who hate fried food, hate sugar and – they’re fat.
And even if all the health complaints were valid, even if anyone could lose weight if they tried – really what business is it of our’s? If people are fat and are content to remain that way then that is THEIR CHOICE. What right do we have to judge them? What right do we have to police them? And certainl;y who are we to force compliance through the law?!
When will we leanr that other people’s bodies and lives are THEIRS not ours to dictate
My question is; When did we become a society who defends a corporation for NOT providing the services it’s charging for? At one time in this country the maxim was ‘the customer is ALWAYS right’ and any service provider who wanted to stay in business needed to bend over backwards to make it so. Now if the customer isn’t happy? Just get them to blame their fellow customers then you can ignore them both.
As for the the question of discrimination, that is EXACTLY what it is. When you pay for an airline ticket, what you are paying for is PASSAGE, not seat space. Economy means you are paying for basic transportation from point A to point B. THAT is all an airline is obligated to give. Unless, of course, your fat. There have been instances of fat people being denied travel despite failing health. Instances of fat people missing opportunities, being unable to attend funerals, weddings, births, or missing the chance to see a loved one a final time because they’ve been denied passage or because passage has been priced out of any reasonable range. We’ve had multiple instances of people being stranded after getting to their destination without trouble and then being denied travel while trying to get home. People trying to comply with the ‘two seat rule’ have been set up to fail with two seats on opposite sides of the plane, with seats situated besides escape doors that sometimes weigh more than THEY do, or on overbooked flights where they are the first bumped and are denied the right to travel.
Sometimes these occurrences hit the news. Mostly on a slow news day. But you don’t get to hear about it all that much because, as Renee mentioned, fat bodies and fat PEOPLE have been disappeared by the media. The only time you see a fat person in the media it’s usually only to further medicalize fat or reinforce the moral panic of the ‘obesity epidemic’. An epidemic which, for all intensive purposes, doesn’t even exist.
To the person who is tall: You are tall, and the seat is too small for you. You are inconveniencing the person sitting next to you.
And yet, Southwest doesn’t have any “Too Tall to Fly” policy. They don’t make tall people or broad-shouldered people or people with long legs buy two seats. So clearly it isn’t about saving people inconvenience from everyone who overflows the seats; it’s just about targeting fat people.
This lardassed maker of shit films needs to shut the fuck up and respect the rest of the human race whose space he is taking up. I lost 25 pounds in the last 3 months from losing my job and having to live on unemployment benefits. Indulged entitled mediocres like Smith would not be lauded or tolerated anywhere outside of the US. I’m sick of fatassed douches whose asses take up half a subway car and can’t even walk up a flight of subway stairs. When the poor rebel and attack them they’ll be easy pickings.
Of course.
The above comment is just another example of the responses you always get in any Fat related article EVER published on the internet. Unreasoned, unintelligent, unjustified, hate.
If you had any idea what you were talking about Dirk, you’d realize the most fat people ARE poor.
Hopefully, if the poor DO rebel, YOU won’t have anything to do with leading the charge. Because the designer bought ‘beautiful & toned’, six-pack-ab’ed, model thin, ultra-rich and their paid-for personal-trainers, will be sitting in their gated communities on Nob Hill & Park Avenue laughing at YOU while the poor tare THEMSELVES apart. Brilliant plan General Ignatz.
I dunno, hate can easily be justified when you’re being seriously inconvenienced/endangered by sufferers of the epidemic of hambeast-itis which, contrary to the fervent wishes of the donut club, is in fact dangerous, real, and on the rise
The only upshot is that on those flights over the mountains, you know that if the plane goes down, no one will starve to death 🙂
Hmmm…Because of being poor, at this juncture in my life I eat less, mainly because I can’t afford appealling and healthy food and guess what happened, I LOST 25 POUNDS. Not eating causes you to lose weight. Is this not common knowledge? I’m currently poor and there is a causal relationship between that and my being thinner than wehn I had a job.
I recently lived in Berlin where people drink beer for breakfast with sausages and tend to keep drinking all day and somehow there are very few people overweight, maybe because they ride bikes to work and exercise. I am a martial arts trainer and I’ve seen overweight people drop weight just from good hard workouts twice or 3 times a week. Unless there are a very few medical issues involved, being overweight is a matter of personal responsibility and there is no excuse for an young adult to be so out of shape they take up two plane seats or cannot even walk up a flight of stairs on the subway. I had the experience the previous poster did on a 9 hour flight with somone taking up half my seat and that is fucking inappropriate. He should have paid half my fare if he’d had any self respect or decency and Smith should have as well instead of throwing a twitter hissy.
Okay, let me break it down for you, Dirk. Firstly. Food that is healthy and has lots of nutrients in it is expensive. The cheap stuff, the stuff that the poorest can afford, tends to have no nutritional value and a LOT of calories (eg., Kraft Dinner, ramen). People who have money can afford to buy more fruit, vegetables, lean protein, etc. Secondly. A lot of people below the poverty line are what are known as “the working poor”. They tend to work very long hours, hold multiple jobs, and still barely make enough to survive. Most of these jobs are sedentary. They don’t have time to work out — some barely have enough time to sleep. As a result, *most* fat people living in the developed world are poor. Yes, there are poor thin people, and fat rich people, but they are not the norm. Your piece of anecdotal evidence is just that. And actually, I wouldn’t brag about losing 25 lbs in 12 weeks if I were you, not while you’re trying to preach health. Dropping more than 2lbs/week is not healthy without a doctor’s supervision, especially if you’ve lost that much by *accident*. Sudden weight loss can be a sign of a serious medical problem.
By the way, Kevin Smith was able to sit down in exactly one seat, with his belt on and armrests down. There was a woman in each seat adjacent to him, and neither were bothered by his size. He asked them specifically, actually, and Southwest did not. They kicked him off because the flight was overbooked, and they had to kick someone off. Smith was picked because he was fat. Not so fat as to actually inconvenience anybody, but fat enough that it made a nice excuse. A Southwest representative admitted as much in a letter to him, which you can find on his blog. Yes, I consider this case discrimination, just as I would if someone were kicked off because their blackness or gayness made a nice excuse.
Thank you M. I currently work two jobs and have to use my mom’s food stamps for food, and I am very much fat. I am also a vegetarian. I first started gaining weight in undergrad because I was working two jobs and could only afford, money and time wise (I was not vegetarian then and not using food stamps) to fix myself pasta with sauce and chicken. I gained a lot of weight because I could only really afford starches to cook and when I did eat out it was free/discount food from my fast food job or Taco Bell.
Things haven’t changed much. I am vegetarian now but because of how much work I can do can still really only afford pasta and TVP instead of chicken. Even though I get frozen vegetables it still doesn’t change the fact that time and money wise they are being thrown in rice or pasta. And one of my jobs doesn’t get off until 4 in the morning, so yeah, being broke and pressed for time has not been helpful to helping me lose weight and is responsible for the initial weight gain to begin with.
Really AJ? Really? Dangerous to who? You? How? Or was that just an attempt to be funny/clever? With the crashing planes and starving Fatties. Two things;
1) Can we dispense with the Drama? The airlines are only spouting this ‘Fat people are dangerous’ line because they’re running out of excuses and don’t want to do what they SHOULD be doing. You know, accommodating their customers? This would include YOU as a customer if you weren’t so busy being happily decisive and self conquered. How convenient for the airlines to have you as a group of customers hating on their FELLOW fat passengers and to distracted by their own self-righteousness to realize that the real problem could be easily fixed- Two rows of extra wide seats on each plane is all it would take. But while your throwing your snotty little 5 year old fit about how much you hate fat people and how UNCOMFORTABLE you are, it’s not gonna happen.
2) Believe me, in the unlikely event that we should end up on the same plan in an emergency and have to evacuate, there’s only one place on that plane that you will want to be. And that’s right behind ME. If people are too busy trying to collect their carry-on’s or save their iPhones to move out of the way, you had better believe I CAN move them. If some 100 pound fitness junky has trouble getting the 180 pound emergency door open then he/she is gonna need to move out of MY way ’cause all I’ve got to do is pop the handle and LEAN on it. Dangerous to you? Only if your in my way and not moving fast enough.
While M did a great job in responding to dirk’s close-mindedness already, I did feel compelled to add something. A lot of people think that if someone just stops eating then they can lose weight, but this is actually a huge misconception.
I am self-employed and work from home. I work from home because I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and major depressive disorder, making it virtually impossible for me to go out and get a “normal” job in order to make a living. I am also quite poor, just making enough money to pay the rent for my apartment and pay my bills. The food that it is possible to obtain is very much the type of food that M has already outlined and while I am able to put food in the house, there was a time when I was first moved out on my own, when I couldn’t. Back then if I couldn’t afford to eat, I didn’t eat; plain and simple, but your body reacts when you don’t eat and it goes into starvation mode. Whatever you put inside your body while it is in starvation mode, is broken down very slowly because your body knows that’s all it may be getting and if you aren’t eating regularly, it doesn’t know when to expect food again, so it holds onto it for as long as possible. When you do eat again, your body then holds onto those calories for as long as possible all over again to the point where not eating or eating every once in a while, whenever you have the money to get something to eat again, makes you fat. A lot of people are actually surprised when they find out just how poor I am just because of my size. I’m a size 12-14, depending on the cut of clothes, I eat maybe twice a day but usually it’s just once. I’m “fat” by society’s standards, but that same society would like to think that I just sit home all day eating, which isn’t the case in the least and isn’t true for most of the fat, lower-class people out there.
The hate and discrimination are uglier than any amount of fat ever was.