Cool your jets over United’s leggings fiasco

There are many things in the world that deserve moral outrage.

Animal cruelty, gun violence, racism, terrorism, sexism, people who drive below the speed limit in the passing lane, boot-cut denim, hidden service charges, 80 per cent of the Kardashians, cauliflower, ER wait times, the Snuggie — I will happily hoist my pitchfork and mob with you in solidarity over these abominations.

But unless I’m missing something — and this is always a 50-50 prospect — the outcry this weekend after two teen girls were barred from a United Airlines flight because they were garbed in leggings does not qualify as a moral outrage.

I’m not sure it even warrants mild indignation.

So help me understand what I’m not getting. Help me follow the jet fuel of this alleged discrimination that drew the ire of celebrities, including Chrissy Teigen, William Shatner, Seth Rogen, LeVar Burton and Patricia Arquette.

To recap: the girls were en route from Denver to Minneapolis on Sunday morning when they were told their leggings were inappropriate and they’d need to change if they wanted to board the flight. Another traveller, Shannon Watts, witnessed the kerfuffle and fired off a series of tweets, framing the incident as “sexist.”

This sentiment snowballed and soon United was under an avalanche of scorn.

“As the mother of 4 daughters who live and travel in yoga pants, I’d like to know how many boys @United has penalized for the same reason,” wrote Watts.

I suppose that’s a reasonable first reaction. I have 10-year-old daughters who basically live in leggings, whether they are on terra firma or jonesing for a $15 Kit Kat at 30,000 feet. If I had to guess, 40 per cent of the females who were on my flight last week from Samana to Toronto were in leggings or yoga pants.

Economy might as well be called sardine class these days. Are airline seats now supplied by Graco? The point is: no traveller, male or female, should be penalized for taking an active interest in comfort, even if that means the rest of us are subjected to the retina-searing blight of flip-flops and tank tops.

So if you travel by air, if you’ve noticed the rapid hobofication in how passengers dress, it seems likely there might be more to this story than random and appalling discrimination. That is, it seems there might be a simple, non-controversial explanation for why the leggings girls were told to change.

And sure enough, there was: the leggings girls were what United calls “pass riders,” meaning they were “relatives or friends (of employees) who also receive the benefit of free or heavily discounted air travel.”

They were not paying customers. They were travelling under the terms of a corporate benefits program, one that is bound by its own internal logic and rules, including a dress code. Now, whether that dress code is anachronistic and in need of an update, as Sarah Silverman observed on Twitter, that’s another matter.

But for those girls who expected to be on that flight in those leggings, the problem was not sexism. If they were not “pass riders” and had instead purchased tickets, they could have boarded without issue. But since United views “pass riders” as ambassadors for the brand, it has every right to enforce an existing dress code.

Remember, this is the airline industry, where pilots wear crisp uniforms and flight attendants are often bedazzled with scarfs, pins and jaunty hats. It might seem goofy and pretentious to everyone else, but frontline optics are a central plank in consumer marketing. Yes, those girls obviously do not work for United. But as “pass riders,” they must abide by their responsibilities in what amounts to a great perk.

If an airline offered me a free ticket but asked that I fly in either a tux or hazmat suit, I’d now be browsing Freeman Formalwear or the closest Level 4 lab.

So come on, overreacting celebri- ties! At least wait until you hear all the facts before strapping yourselves into the outrage machine. Save a bit of contempt for the real disgraces and barbarities in our midst. These girls were not victims of anything except their own ignorance.

As United pointed out: “We regularly remind our employees that when they place a family member or friend on a flight for free as a standby passenger, they need to follow our dress code. To our regular customers, your leggings are welcome.”

You see? Your leggings are welcome. End of story.

Now enjoy your flight and please check any moral outrage before arriving at the airport. vmenon@thestar.ca

DREAMSTIME Twitter exploded when two leggings-clad girls were barred from a flight. However, Vinay Menon contends that United Airlines was totally within its rights.