NO! I’d rather chew off my own arm than submit to being weighed in public

WELL, that’s Finland off my holiday list! The country’s national airline Finnair has announced a new policy to weigh customers at checkin so they can ensure a safe take-off and better ‘balance the plane’.

A ‘ voluntary’ option (for now), the airline claims it’s a measure that will be applied discreetly for everyone’s benefit.

Odd, I’ve never noticed planes listing precariously above Heathrow because all the heavy people were seated on one side of the aisle. But perhaps too many Finnish folk are overly fond of chips, and the airborne security of their nation is at stake.

Frankly, I don’t care what excuse ‘Thinnair’, as it’s been dubbed, comes up with for doing this, I’d rather chew off my own arm than submit to being weighed in public.

Currently a size 18, I’d probably have to gnaw off more than one limb to avoid being selected for any special treatment: ‘Actually, madam, we think you’d be better off on the next flight.’

It all smacks of customer humiliation, doesn’t it?

Even if, as they claim, the system will be totally anonymous and only check-in staff will see your magic number, one’s weight — like one’s politics and religion — is something you simply don’t divulge in polite society.

I don’t want anybody to know how high the needle goes when I stand on the scales, and never have done — even at my thinnest.

My partner doesn’t know how much I weigh, so why on earth should Helmi from Helsinki?

AFTERall, weight is such an emotive subject. For most, it is a well-travelled land full of pitfalls, traps and self-loathing. Indeed, there is barely a woman I know who is not on some sort of diet or weight-loss and gym regimen, regardless of their size.

I recently found a diary I kept 25 years ago and even then I was worrying, nay obsessing, about my weight — considering myself fat when I was a size 12 and, frankly, pretty damn hot.

Now my bathroom scales have been banished to the garden shed and I’m only ever hot when I’ve been pushing the Dyson around the house.

I’m at the stage of being terrified I will need to ask for a seat belt extension on a plane (so far so good — thanks to Spanx).

Yes, my swimsuit years are behind me, and no, my idea of a holiday is never going to include standing in line clutching my passport, waiting, along with my fellow passengers, to be weighed.

But it’s voluntary, Finnair reassure us. This is disingenuous too, for what woman (or man, for that matter) will want to make a fuss by refusing to step on the scales in front of a queue of people, especially if they are on the chubby side.

Of course, the happily thin will say that weighing passengers is not a new idea. Back in the 1920s, in the fledgling years of air travel when planes were less robust, they routinely weighed passengers before boarding.

But they did a lot of things back then — like thinking smoking was good for you and that casual sexual harassment was complimentary.

Supposedly we’ve moved on, so please don’t try to pretend there’s an historical excuse for this. What’s next, I ask myself?

Will they calorie count the in-flight snacks and serve Slimfast instead of sandwiches?

And how will this new system work? Do they turn you away if the plane is full of hefty rugby players or put out a Tannoy message asking for passengers under 8 st to please come forward to the desk?

One friend suggested they should weigh people with their hand luggage and give everyone the same allowance. This would mean that she, a wisp of a thing, could pack bricks into her wheelie case, while I’d be carrying a purse with a spare pair of pants. I don’t think so.

Then she suggested having different tiers for men and women, according to their height. Again, no.

Maybe you could self- select your body type when doing an online check-in, using euphemisms such as ‘slim’ for bony, and ‘voluptuous’ for the chubsters?

Why, if this is such an important factor in air travel, hasn’t any other airline tried it yet?

Budget carriers, with their fees for everything from seat choice to using a credit card, would surely love to monetise our, ahem, excess baggage. Ryanair has been threatening to charge £1 to use the loos on flights for years, so weighing-in sounds right up its gangway.

Gone would be the practice of wearing your entire wardrobe so you can save on hand luggage.

NOWyou’d be starving yourself for the week before the holiday, forgoing underwear and insisting on removing your shoes before stepping on the scales.

In fact, surely it’s only a matter of time before Finnair, and all the fellow airline industry money-grabbers, slap on a fat tax and charge us by the kilo.

It’s a shame, because I did have plans to see the Northern Lights in Finland. I had assumed that all those chaps in chunky Scandinavian knits with sufficient body fat to ward off the cold would maybe welcome a wellupholstered woman to share the long arctic nights with. But they can weep into their glögg at this rate.

Oh, Finnair, what have you started? You’re based in what is supposed to be the happiest country in the world, home to the glorious pastime of pänts-drunk, which is exactly what it sounds like — relaxing by sitting around in your underwear slugging down alcohol.

This we like. This we will happily do. But being publicly fat-shamed at the airport? Nope — there is not enough booze in the world.