A call to action: your fat friend is going it alone

May 7, 2016 7:05 PM

"Apologies were foregone. Common courtesies were abandoned. Errol Narvaez was never treated as a passenger. To the airline, he was cumbersome, inconvenient cargo, inanimate and in the way.... when [people] see fat people being mistreated, they freeze. Maybe it’s because the risk feels too big. Maybe they don’t know what to say. Maybe they genuinely don’t notice. Whatever the reason, they don’t intervene. And when they stay silent, I am still alone. I am stuck, I am reeling, and I am alone."
posted by roomthreeseventeen (16 comments total)

I just want to say that I hope this thread doesn't turn into weight-loss advice or health trolling or blaming of people for living in the bodies they have.

Some think poor treatment of fat people is warranted: if fat people don’t want to be shamed, rejected, excluded, they should just lose weight. Poor treatment is the price of admission for having the body you have.

Yep.

Honestly, as a small fat person in a fat part of the country, I squeak by a lot of the time. But I have dear friends and relatives who are bigger. What I worry about is actually EMTs - I once read a terrible story about a bunch of EMTs who basically made fun of a big guy in front of his wife while he died on the floor. I can't even think about it much because I start trying to think about what words I will use to try to get care for someone I love.
posted by Frowner at 7:17 PM on May 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

I must say, I feel for all parties in Errol Narvaez's story. On the one hand, Narvaez got a bum deal, especially after he attempted to avoid the situation by getting an aisle seat.

On the other hand, I feel for Narvaez's seatmate -- I too would not like to be forced to endure the encroachment into my (very small) space and even direct bodily contact for a five hour flight, as I imagine would be unavoidable given Narvaez's size. I would probably suck it up and deal with it, but I can't really find fault with them for complaining.

I'm not really sure what the solution is. The linked article seems to completely ignore the perspective of the seatmate, who has a legitimate complaint.
posted by crazy with stars at 7:28 PM on May 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

The problem is that getting to a reasonable weight is the hardest thing that people will often do in their lives. There will be many failures along the way. Stuff like this really fucking sucks and I'm thankful that I can still comfortable fit into a seat despite being overweight.

But then again, you know an airline seat is 17-19 inches wide. Anyone who's been on a plane ever knows this. Hell, anyone who's seen a picture of an inside of a plane can see this. I'm not sure how someone expects the laws of physics to resolve the situation in their favor.
posted by Talez at 7:30 PM on May 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

The process and act of flying is humiliating enough for the common human animal. I don't doubt for a second that the culture of blame around fat people is the biggest contributing factor to the lack of backup this article says they get, but it's also how dehumanized we all are by the time we get seated on the plane. I think we're cowed in more ways than one.
posted by doctorfrog at 7:32 PM on May 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

The linked article seems to completely ignore the perspective of the seatmate, who has a legitimate complaint.

I mean, isn't the solution to try and come to some reasonable agreement? The linked article says that the complaining person was offered two other middle seats and turned them down. I get that you might not want a middle seat, but I feel that I'd want a middle seat, or even to be a bit cramped, before humiliating another person.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:32 PM on May 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

"Seats were 18 inches wide before airline deregulation in the 1970s and have since been whittled to 16 and a half inches." For a lot of people, the problem could be resolved if the airlines sold a product actually calculated to accommodate the people who use it.

Unfortunately, I don't think that would be the case for Mr. Narvaez. Equally unfortunately, most people can't afford to pay for two seats on an airline, especially since fat people tend to earn less to begin with. It's a difficult problem. What's not difficult is not using dehumanizing or insulting language to the fat person involved.
posted by praemunire at 7:35 PM on May 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

The system is unfair. You should be able to obtain wider seats. It's a reasonable accommodation for the bigger person and their seat mates. Airlines need to calculate the percent of ther passengers that can't fit in a normal with seat and add wider ones. Yup, you need to pay more if you can't fit in a regular seat. You require more space. It's just the reality of the situation.
posted by Kalmya at 7:38 PM on May 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

But this article isn't just about airplanes, or even primarily about airplanes. It's about the idea that it's okay to shame fat people, and that non-fat people just stand idly by. Read down to the part where some woman just lays into her on the street out of the blue in a really horrible way and no one says anything.

Or consider that the airline actually attempted to charge this guy for rebooking him onto another flight after kicking him off. It's not even about "the laws of physics" or whatever, it's about how a lot of people think that it's okay to treat fat people shittily as a matter of course.
posted by Frowner at 7:39 PM on May 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

Okay, the author of this might have assumed just a liiiitle too much familiarity with the backstory here, on the part of the reader. I read this paragraph:

Errol Narvaez was carried away in a flood. He was traveling home after a weekend in Las Vegas when his seat disappeared. Errol, like me, is fat, and flying is a gauntlet, a decathlon. He lived through one of my greatest fears: he was ejected from a plane.

...and rushed through the rest of the article trying to find out what the disaster was with the plane. And the flood.
posted by Rich Smorgasbord at 7:42 PM on May 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yes. This article spoke very well about the experience of being marginalized. I am not a big person but I am a marginalized one, and a lot of this story rang true for me despite our different contexts.

Unreal that they tried to charge him more money and made him take such a late flight that he didn't arrive until 2am. The airline here literally thinks he should have to be punished for their failure to move the other person or to have seats so small that they don't accommodate the majority of their customers. 16.5 inches is really not much room. I weigh 100 pounds and am pint sized and I'm really packed in when I fly. I can't imagine being even an average weight and height and flying, let alone being overweight.
posted by sockermom at 7:44 PM on May 7, 2016

I don't know. I probably wouldn't have said anything, even though I would have been totally furious on his behalf, because I would have worried that saying something would have added to his humiliation. I might have emailed something to the airline afterwards, but putting myself in his shoes, I think I would have wanted to get off the plane as quickly as possible without anyone making any more of a fuss about it than had already been made. That might not be the right call, and I recognize that I am 100% crazy about anything related to weight, but that's what I would have done. And it wouldn't have been for lack of sympathy for the guy getting kicked off the plane.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:50 PM on May 7, 2016

And the part about being alone. If you are a fat person, you can be really, really alone if you don't have fat friends. What I mean is that you have no one to share your experience of the world with, even if you have friends.

Two aspects of being fat (and I'm not even that fat, when I'm around other thirtyish-fortyish average Minnesotans I am only somewhat stouter than average):

For years believing that [minor yet annoying medical problem] was caused by me being fat and therefore incurable. I did not even mention it to the doctor, because I thought it was my fault. And lo, once I realized that it wasn't caused by being fat, wasn't my fault and was curable, I got it fixed. But I had just assumed that any minor physical annoyance I suffered was my fault because I was fat, of course.

The mental thing that I always do where I try to not make people uncomfortable by reminding them that I am fat. Like, for instance, I don't talk about dating or sex, ever, because if I talk about those things then people are reminded of my loathesome fat body and gross fat sexuality and they are uncomfortable, but I also have to hide that I am avoiding talking about these things ,because if people notice that I am not talking about them, then they feel bad because they don't like noticing that I am excluded. I am also always very careful to signpost that I am Not Looking For A Relationship Right Now, because it beats knowing that others live in dread of being hit on by the fatty. It's not even the fact of not talking about relationships or the fact of being very careful never to give even the faintest sign that might be taken for romantic interest; it's the tiringness of always carefully managing my reactions and words, always acting so that others don't feel either grossed out by gross fatties or uncomfortable with their own dislike of fat people. That's what I mean by being alone.
posted by Frowner at 7:54 PM on May 7, 2016 [15 favorites]

Mod note: Couple of derail comments deleted, please reload before responding.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:55 PM on May 7, 2016

Airlines don't sell you space, or carriage by weight, they sell you a ticket to a destination. People shouldn't have to pay more, airlines should accommodate (graciously) their paying customers. All of them.
posted by misfish at 8:13 PM on May 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

I fly a lot for work. I myself am a bigger guy. I'm not fat, but at 6'3 250lbs I don't fit comfortably in most cars, much less airplanes. When I have to fly coach I understand no one sees me ducking down the aisle and wants to sit near The Hulk.

I am always polite and I never use an armrest. I fly with my arms crossed and knees up, and that's before the asshole in front of me tries to put his seat back. He can't, my legs are already jammed up against there. I stay inside my seat zone even though it pains me. That's the social contract we all make right?

I generally upgrade to at least the roomy version right behind first class for $19, if not first class, but that's not always possible when I have to book a flight that morning.

But I have had occasion to sit next to real fat guys, like 300lb+. That is not even possible next to me even if they have aisle seats. First, the armrests have to be up for that to even happen, and that means dude is already taking 20% of my seat that I need so I don't crush poor grandma in the window seat. And I would never dream of raising that other armrest. Also I think they all have to be down for takeoff and landing? I don't pay attention to that anymore. Second, dude is 40% hanging out into the aisle all the time, which the flight attendants don't like, for safety reasons, and they can't get their carts by at all.

I don't like what happened in the article, guy being removed and all, but there was a lot of hyperbole in there too. I honestly don't care much myself, being in that position a lot. Flying is uncomfortable enough without having to factor in the whatever percent of people that can't fit into a seat. Fly Southwest dude, you can book two tickets and they will refund you if the plane isn't full. If it is, you paid for two seats that you legit took up.
posted by sanka at 8:26 PM on May 7, 2016

That writer has a bunch of really well-written heartbreaking essays. I don't understand why bigotry against big people is still acceptable. And just when I thought it was as horrible as it could be, I find out about especially cruel harassment in London.
posted by Bella Donna at 8:26 PM on May 7, 2016