Woman Called "Fatphobic" for Not Wanting to Sit Between Plus-Sized Passengers
She asked people how they could have handled the situation differently.
Over the past few years, the conversation surrounding how airlines should handle larger-than-average people has been quite controversial as airplane seats have gotten smaller. Due to differing opinions, some individuals express concern about paying additional fees for a larger seat based on weight or size. Consequently, certain circumstances have arisen that may lead to discomfort for both these individuals and those around them. Recently, a teenager took to the popular social media thread to discuss a situation that unfolded during a flight where they were sat between two plus-sized passengers and accused of being "fatphobic" when asked to change seats.
The 19-year-old writes that they were on a flight from Las Vegas to New York and assigned a middle seat, "and both people next to me were plus sized," they wrote. "I wouldn't have any problem with this in any other situation, but plane seats are terribly small and neither of my neighbors were able to fit comfortably into their seats."
"On either side of me, my seat neighbor's shoulder was on top of mine and their thigh was on top of mine as well. It was a pretty long flight and was kind of uncomfortable, so about an hour and a half through, I walked up to the flight attendant and explained the situation as privately and gently as I could, and I asked if there were any other seats available," they continued in the post.
The flight attendant located a seat a few rows back, and the teen started getting her bag from underneath the seat in front of her, adding that "moving was pretty awkward, but the rest of the flight went fine."
However, after getting off the flight, one of the women was waiting for the teen. "She essentially told me that I had embarrassed her and the other man and that traveling while plus-sized is hard enough without 'people treating fatness like a contagious disease,'" the user wrote.
"She also said that I made it a public demonstration to everyone that plus sized passengers are an 'inconvenience' and opened the door to fatphobia on flights. I really didn't mean for it to come across that way, but I can understand how it did and everyone on the flight saw me move, so now I'm wondering whether I should have just stuck it out, it's wasn't like I was being suffocated or anything," the post continued.
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The post received thousands of comments, many demonstrating "blatant fatphobia," the teenager wrote in an update. "Cut it out. I posted this to get some insight on if and how I maybe could have handled the situation better, not to give an example of how 'all larger people are xyz,'" they said. "And if you don't literally know every single larger person that has ever lived, you have no business commenting anything like that in the first place."
