JetBlue’s dress code fuels online war
Dancer barred from flight because her too-short shorts were deemed inappropriate
On May 18, Maggie McMuffin pulled on her grey tiger sweater, black-andwhite striped volleyball-style shorts and thigh-high socks, then boarded a JetBlue flight from New York to Boston.
According to McMuffin, a burlesque dancer who uses that as her stage name, the trip was “lovely.”
But as she prepared to hop on her connecting flight back home to Seattle, a member of the flight crew stopped her at the gate. Her clothes were inappropriate, she was told. She’d need to find something else to wear or find a different flight.
McMuffin had just two small carryon bags and nothing inside them that she could swap with the now-problematic shorts.
“I could tie a sweater around my waist,” the dancer told KOMO News she said to the flight crew. “I could get a blanket from you guys.”
McMuffin says her black-andwhite short shorts “covered everything” and her body was “90-percent” covered. The crew wouldn’t budge. McMuffin darted to a store in the airport terminal, where she found a pair of $22 XL floral women’s pyjama bottoms that would provide “proper coverage” to satisfy JetBlue, she told NBC affiliate King 5.
She returned to the gate and was allowed to board.
It wasn’t until that night that the dancer, who had been on the East Coast for a performance, tweeted about her experience: “Hey @JetBlue I was catching a connecting flight in Boston after a lovely flight from New York. Five minutes before boarding I was stopped.”
In the weeks that followed, a photo that McMuffin took of herself in the suspect shorts has circulated online, drawing criticism from people who side with the airline and say the dancer’s shorts weren’t appropriate for public. Those who admonished her called the shorts “skanky” and McMuffin “trashville” and a “clown.”
She thinks those people — and the airline’s policy — are sexist.
“Really, aside from my hands and my face, I had four, maybe five inches of skin showing,” McMuffin told King 5. “Everything was covered. I was not breaking any laws.”
But among those who support her, also sharing the photo alongside hashtags like #BootySolidarity and #BootyShortSupport, the incident has become another symbol of what some call an unfair policing of women’s bodies in the public sphere.
JetBlue has apologized to the dancer and offered a $162 flight credit, the TV station reported, but McMuffin said she just wants the airline to offer sensitivity training and be more clear about its in-flight dress code.