NEWS: Fly Me, I'm Frivolous

CULTURE: Fly Me, I'm Frivolous

Ah, the joy of international travel, in search of places where annoying feminist ideas haven't yet destroyed civilization.

Because, you know, thin women are fitter than women who aren't thin:

And chicks can always lose weight -- which makes them healthier, don'tcha know -- because, after all, the Ark story is true:

Moreover, telling women to stay small in no way violates their humanity; big women aren't, after all, humans:

Do I really need to articulate why this finding is fucked up?

Probably, so let's have at it; in any case, the reasons are so obvious it'll take all of five minutes to spell them out.

First, thin women are often weaker than their bigger sisters, especially if their thinness is the result of excessive dieting.

Second, muscle weighs more than fat -- so correlating fitness with weight is doubly stupid.

Third, even if you use BMI, which at least takes into account height, there are still a ton of variables, including ethnicity and body fat itself that it doesn't predict well.

Fourth, it's possible that dieting is worse for your health than maintaining a steady, if high, weight.

Fifth, the Ark is a myth.

Sixth, it seems to be untrue that people can simply choose to lose weight.

Seventh, asking a living creature -- what with "living" including "growth" -- to control its growth is, in fact, an attack on its status as living. What with women, surprisingly, being living creatures, telling them to stay small is, therefore, an attack on their humanity -- of which "womanhood" is, and I know this is a leap -- a part.

Eighth -- and I love this -- there's the fact that Air India also demands that its flight attendants have perfect teeth and no acne. Doubtless this is because crooked teeth and zits are widely known to prevent people from being able to compromise flight safety.

If you're inclined to actually learn something about the science and politics of the weight issue -- as opposed to simply having the same uninformed opinions everyone else has -- you can read this book or this blog, both of which provide much more and better evidence than I have here.

Bitch_PhD thanks mat8drb for the link. If she were in a plane emergency, she wouldn't give a shit what the flight attendants looked like; all the better if they have the constitutions and training of Marines.

but have you SEEN how wide those isles are !

geesh. Give a little.

Same argument happened here years ago, the fat girls lost, the Airlines argument was that they wouldn't fit down the isles or some shit. Truth be told even people a little chubby are discrimnated againts alot in our society . In some ways the obese should, like its only your health lets not offend the the poor fat kid when his heart fails .....
As for a couple of chubby girls working for an airline give them a job plenty of chubby people fly they wont mind and neither do I.

Proof the whole world is superficial?

this reminds me of a few years back when there was a big hullabaloo about requiring fat - sorry, obese - people to buy more than one plane ticket because of the discomfort they caused other passengers when trying to shoehorn themselves into tiny, tiny seats.

Proof that people's abililty to rationalize sexism knows no bounds.

When a plane goes down, and I have to get through the aisle, I hope I'm not trapped behind a morbidly obese flight attendant. But chances are, I'll be stuck behind a thin flight attendant with high heels and broken ankes, who is too weak to push on the morbidly obese passenger who is wedged in the aisle.

And then we all die.

OH! But what if we crash-land in the mountains and all we have to live off of is the skinny-as-hell flight attendants? They would surely freeze to death in their miniskirts and no insulating layer of blubber.

There's a world of difference between what most people consider "overweight"--including, I'm sure, the folks who set the standards at Indian Airlines--and "morbidly obese." But yeah, ha ha.

*sigh* Sadly enough, this doesn't even suprise me. The world is an increasingly shallow place to be. But we have our little corner of sanity here, no?

Oh, yeah. We SG members don't support this sort of thing with our four bucks a month. Ugh-uh. Not us. Sean & Missy are making sure that lots of overweight gals with ratty-ass teeth and acne are in all these photo sets day after day.

in the middle of an impending air disaster i would prefer to throw my arms around a nice round, soft flight attendant for reassurance and protection.

Girls GirlS GiRls...
DON'T LET THE MAN GET YOU DOWN!

I guess your doctorate was not in a subject where quantitative skills are required. A pound of fat weighs the same as a pound of muscle or a pound of feathers or a pound of gold the volume of each are different.

The airlines need to worry less about the appearance of flight crew and more about on time performance. Get our flights on time, edible food, clean planes, stop overbooking, and about 500 other things than need to be fixed than and only then the airlines can worry if some flight attendant is 5 pounds "over weight".

obviously what she was getting at is that muscle is denser than fat, so that the same volume of muscle would weigh more than the same volume of fat.

way to miss the point.
being able to properly deal with a crisis on an airplane does not require good looks. looks are in no way part of the job of flight attendant.

being a model on the other hand clearly requires appealing looks.

i think she was stating that an identical volume of muscle weighs more than an identical volume of fat, hence leading one to the conclusion that muscle tissue has a higher density than fat.

i was too slow.

that's ok, i realized i used "the same" twice. poor phrasing.

Oh Bitch, don't forget and dismiss the romance and culture of the airlines of the past. It was great to go to the airport and seem to move into an environment as orderly as a hospital, but with only pretty and powerful things. I still like the attendants on Virgin Airlines. Can you imagine SG without standards on the visuals of the sets; and thats art, not union work rules.

Even today, in a corporate jet, one of the pilots come back to serve you breakfast. Big old guy, not nearly as nice as 30 years ago on commercial.

And I want sites like SG to be able to pick and choose the sets and folks that become SGs, it is what I like about the site.

I wouldn't be offended by the idea of a novelty airline that made a big thing of hiring only attractive men and women**. I understand that sometimes people like to be surrounded by pretty people, and I don't mind a company selling that service.

What bothers me is that they're trying to hide it under the guise of less attractive people 'not being able to do their jobs'. That's just insulting and wrong.

**Although I would be worried about their safety standards. Being a guy with awesome abs or a girl with a double D doesn't neccessarily mean you can pilot a Boeing 747.

_Jordan_ said:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Proof the whole world is superficial?

Fuck it, dude, I'm flying to India.

You also have to remember that a plane can only hold so much weight. So if you have a lot of bigger people on the flight that means you have less people on the plane which means the airline loses money.

this is fucked up.

AND...

hahahahah

Why didn't they just be honest and say "We believe the attractiveness of our flight attendants influences our profits" instead of playing it off as some sort of bullshit safety issue. Hey it sucks and it's shallow and sexist, but hooters didn't get so popular just because of their hot wings.

One cookie to anyone who finds me the actual height/weight requirements that airline used; I'm curious.