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Today in infuriating news, a British woman wearing a crop top and high-waisted pants has revealed she was told to cover up on a flight from Birmingham to Tenerife.
Emily O’Connor, 21, said cabin crew on her Thomas Cook flight called her outfit “inappropriate” and said it “caused offence.”
According to her Twitter post, four staff surrounded her and said she would be removed from the plane unless she put a jacket on.
The incident left O’Connor “shaking and upset.” Even more so when the staff stood by and “did nothing” as a male passenger swore at her and shouted, “Shut up you pathetic woman. Put a fucking jacket on.”
When O’Connor’s cousin seated at the front of the plane gave her a jacket, the staff watched and waited until she’d physically put it on.
“They announced that I was offensive and inappropriate in front of the whole flight. I was physically shaking, and they could see that, yet they continued to sexualise and ridicule me. It was the worst experience of my life,” she wrote on Twitter.
It’s not the first time an airline has come under fire for #passengershaming and policing women’s clothes. In 2017, United Airlines refused to let two girls in leggings board a flight from Denver to Minneapolis because “spandex is not allowed.”
And earlier this year, a Gold Coast woman said she was “slut shamed” by Jetstar on a flight to Brisbane when a staff member said her crop top was “inappropriate” and asked her to put a tee shirt on or cover up with a blanket.
Let’s be clear: criticising and embarrassing women for wearing crop tops is slut shaming.
Women are held to a much higher dress standard on flights and it’s straight up sexist. I haven’t read a single headline about a man in thongs, board shorts and a Bintang singlet with his hairy shoulders on show being removed from a flight to Bali because his outfit was “inappropriate.”
And yet, if a woman dares to show even a glimpse of her midriff on a plane she’s publicly shamed and threatened with being removed from the flight. It’s a gross double standard and it needs to stop.
Thank you for calling out this misogynistic behaviour Emily O’Connor. We’ll continue calling it out until airlines realise policing women’s clothing is unacceptable.
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