The past year has seen a great deal of discussion over the heavy scrutiny that school dress codes put on girls’ bodies, but they aren’t the only institution infamous for doing so.
Time and time again, we’ve heard stories about travelers being removed from flights or getting their boarding delayed because of what they were wearing. In at least one case, airline staff apparently thought such a matter was worth getting the police involved.
And in each of these cases, we can see that a big part of the problem stems from the fact that these airlines have policies against lewd or offensive clothing, but rarely define what actually makes an article of clothing offensive. For that reason, that judgement is left up to the discretion of the flight crew, who can widely vary in what they deem appropriate.
But in one recent case that saw a DJ removed from her flight, it seems that the problem had more to do with the false sense of security she experienced and how staff expected her to address a dress code issue than the code itself.
On April 25, South Korean musician DJ Soda boarded an American Airlines flight from New York City to Los Angeles to attend an important business meeting alongside her manager.
And as Insider reported , her outfit for this flight included sweatpants with variations on a certain expletive printed on them.
If that sounds like it would obviously violate the airline’s dress code, it seemed she had reason to think otherwise because she had previously worn them throughout her North American tour without incident.
And this latest voyage began in a similar fashion with both the gate agent and a flight attendant welcoming her onto the flight as though nothing was amiss.
However, as she wrote in an Instagram post , this changed soon after she made it to her seat as she was suddenly told to pack up her belongings and leave the plane without explanation.
It was only as she was being escorted off that she was told her pants were offensive and that she would have to board the next flight.
Since this flight was time-sensitive for her, she pleaded with them to let her board.
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She also offered to change her pants, but it seemed they had very specific and bizarre circumstances in mind for that before they’d let her back on the plane.
As DJ Soda told it, she was harassed to remove her pants in front of the flight crew at the gate and stand “half-naked” in full public view for a time. This was made all the more difficult for her due to the fact that she has a couple of broken fingers.
As she put it, “They even sarcastically commented that I could have taken off my pants earlier.”
Finally, she was allowed to board after she turned her pants inside out.
Although this would normally seem like a simple solution that could have occurred in private, it ended up delaying the flight by an hour and humiliating her due to the apparent requirement that she do this publicly.
In her words, “I was mortified and trembling in fear for the next 6 hours on my flight back to LA.”
Insider reported that American Airlines has yet to respond to the incident, but DJ Soda is now boycotting the airline and expressed her hope that what she experienced never happens to anyone else.
h/t: Insider
