NEWS: Fly Me, I'm Frivolous

you baffle me. this was insulting on so many levels

^^^^ Keepin it real.

It would be interesting to hear what the airllines healthy wieght range is before judgement is passed on this.

I don't care how fat the attendents are, but I swear to God if I have to sit next to another lard-assed passenger taking up part of my seat too, I will go on some kind of fatty genocide. A 12-hour trans-oceanic flight with three quarters of a seat is the very definition of hell.

PS: It sucks, but people will pay more for service from attractive people. (Hell, I ain't paying SG to look at ugly girls) And I think it's fair to discriminate based on how well one can fulfill one's job role. Now, if they'll hire fat ugly men, then you can be pissed.

just because someone is thin doesn't make them attractive and/or weak. someone who's fat doesn't make them ugly and/or strong. the safety issue partially deals with obese flight attendants obstructing emergency exits and the inability to maneuver emergency/safety equipment through the cabin during inflight and ground emergencies.

by the way, hooters did have flights operated by pace airlines. flights ended sometime in 2006.

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

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not really. sure an obese woman may be capable of short bursts of strenght, but they lack the endurance that comes with being healther.

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

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well I dont think they are intending to hire 200 pound body builders either, they probably want enout muscle so that the stewardesses can carry their own weight for a long flight.


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.

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I agree, I am interested in hearing how they judge what is too fat.

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

---No doubt, but they are looking for women who are thinner, nt nessisarily women who are dieting.



Sixth, it seems to be untrue that people can simply choose to lose weight
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I was a 260 pound fatty untill I was 18, and decided over the wekend that I wanted to lose weight, I began to count calories and exercise, and I am now 102 pounds lighter, because I chose to.

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.

---not all growth is good, and this particular growth can lower life span and quality. if these women feel atacked anyway, I think they should seek out other employment imidiatley.


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.

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Thats fucked, why would they want to work there?

a few extra hundred pounds on a large commercial airliner won't bump people off the plane. now if you were flying on a regional jet, turbo prop or general aviation plane, passenger and luggage weight will have an effect on how many people take flight.

I'm surprised you didn't feel the need to include the fact that the judge that ruled on this case was a woman, and I found this part of the article interesting...

That, combined with the fact the airline that wants perfect teeth and no acne is Air India whereas the airline involved in this case is Indian Airlines rather implies that their weight limit is just that, a weight limit. As the article doesn't state what the limit is, you can't really say if it is justified for reasons of health or safety.
Also, Indian Airlines seems to judge its men more harshly than its women, this guy was grounded for refusing to save his handlebar moustache. Oh, but he won in court, and was allowed to fly again, so I guess the court system must be inherently sexist.

You might also find this page interesting. It details the discriminatory practices of Air India...

And the lengths the Indian courts have been going to to stop those discriminatory practices.

FYI 58 is the official retirement age for all women in India. Indian Airlines - the state owned company in question in this article - have always complied with any court decision, which other than in this case has always been very clearly a decision to remove discriminatory practices against women (so maybe it deserves the benefit of the doubt and a little research to find out if this one wasn't). Air India on the other hand have gone to court again and again to try and maintain a young, attractive female cabin crew, and often acted in violation of the court rulings against them.

Maybe if you did a bit of research you could find an issue that's actually worth getting on your high horse about. Or do you just like the fact that you're so often wrong other people have to go to lengths to find some truth in your stories and point you in the right direction?

Precisely. That they have this policy doesn't bother me in particular. That they are too pissweak to simply state that bums in tight minis =bums on seats= profit! does bother me.

Exactly. I truly could not care less how "attractive" the in flight crew is, but I really do care alot if the plane is on time or not. Oh, and if it has been properly maintained and the crew is fairly compensated and skilled.

When I want to look at sexy females there are an abundance of appropriate places to do so, like SG.

Go Obama!

Her point was that a woman who weighs 200 pounds could have less fat and more muscle than a woman who weighs 120 pounds. Thus, the heavier woman might be stronger, fitter and more able to do their job (contrary to what the court asserted).

+1.

The intent was clearly to push out attendants they didn't feel were attractive, so why even bother arguing about their rationaliizations?

That's a bit like pruning the tip of the weed.

The real question is "is it ok for this airline to make an attractiveness standard a job requirement?"

Fat stewardeses are fine with me as long as I get to stuff my large Hobbit belly with goat tikka masala and gulab jamon!!

I thought about saying something about that, since half the folks that comment on my articles assume that a feminist p.o.v. means hating men. But I didn't, because I take it for granted that women, not being idiots, are just as capable of learning and internalizing sexist ideas as men are. Given that very few of us are raised under rocks, most of us carry around plenty of sexist bullshit in our heads: women are just as capable as men of thinking that fat women are slobs, that being femmey means "taking care of oneself," that men are more natural leaders, and all the rest of it.

Anyway, thanks for giving me the chance to actually articulate that. (Not that I imagine it'll make a lot of difference.... )

The problem with the rationalizations is that *they* are what's behind the legal finding. If the airline simply said, "we insist that our employees look hawt, and for women that means X, Y, and Z" then I suspect the court would find their standards discriminatory, yes, inasmuch as hawtness doesn't have anything to do with job performance.

Thank you.

You're right, that was probably why the airline decided to insult fat people's ability to do their jobs and rationalise the policy the way they did.

But I think that was a mistake on their part, as I don't think they needed to do this - I'm not 100% sure about India's legal system, but in England its perfectly alright to hire people based on their attractiveness if you state that looking good is a crucial part of the job role. For example, everywhere from Abercrombie and Fitch to Hooters are allowed to only hire shop assistants and waiters with a certain 'look' as they state its a crucial part of doing the job and projecting the brand image. If Indian Airlines had said 'we want our staff to maintain a particular appearance to project our brand image', not only would they have been completely free and clear legally, but they would be allowed to start discriminating based on other things such as cup size and hair style.

Although, on a side note, this legal excuse is only really allowed for positions where the employee is liasing with customers. And there are limits - for example, Abercrombie and Fitch were almost exclusively hiring white people because they said their corporation wanted to project an 'all-American image'. However, they failed to prove in a court of law that 'all-American' meant 'all-white', and they've been given very large fines and many of their executives have been forced to attend racial tolerance classes.

So there are limits, as that story shows, but if Indian Airlines had just been honest about wanting to use sex appeal to attract customers, they probably would have been legally fine. Although, the law be different in a conservative country such as India, and their customers may then have turned against them for being the 'superficial' airline that sells itself with sex appeal.

That's the only part of what I said you feel the need to comment on?