Spirit Airlines, new dress code means tacky clothing is unwelcome. Photo Credit Flickr copyright of Bur
Tacky looks are not welcome aboard one airline’s planes but who decides what constitutes as trashy or “inadequately clothed”?
Having recently changed their dress-code standards Spirit Airlines have caused a furore, with multiple travellers now coming forward and sharing their experiences being dress-coded on their flights.
Spirit Airline’s new dressing standards clauses are causing passengers no end of trouble.
They have included new clauses in their flight conditions of their customer’s orders, that states “A guest shall not be permitted to board the aircraft or may be required to leave an aircraft if that guest: is barefoot or inadequately clothed (i.e. see-through clothing; not adequately covered; exposed breasts, buttocks or other private parts).” Their new rules also extend as far as saying “or whose clothing or article, including body art, is lewd, obscene, or offensive in nature.”
But as traveller’s experiences show this wording is vague enough to apply to just about anything, from crop tops that weren’t exposing “private parts” to a hoodie with an anti-hate message misread as “lewd or obscene”.
In October 2024 Tara Kehidi and Teresa Araujo were asked to leave a Spirit Airline flight having worn crop tops under cardigans, they removed the cardigans as the flight got warmer and a male flight attendant asked them cover their stomachs. The women said when they asked the attendant to expand upon the dress code they had broken, the situation escalated and they were removed from the flight. They said he’d made them feel humiliated “having to be escorted and treated like a criminal just because we were wearing crop tops. It was such a dehumanizing experience.”
The question is who is policing the clothing on flights? And can it possibly be fairly applied to both men and women? When, in reality a lot women’s clothing is not designed as functionally as men’s, in fact it is often made to display a woman’s body as opposed to covering it up.
It is also worth noting that a clothing violation will now get passengers escorted from their flight, under the same terms as violent conduct that creates “an unreasonable risk to other guests” on a spirit airline flight. These are somehow now equitable negative standards of behaviour.
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