Plane talk and sagging shorts
THE FIRST time I boarded a plane for a destination that was not Tobago, I wore a suit and tie. Many years and many flights later, when the management of BWIA gave me a first-class ticket to London, I was politely but pointedly informed by a very senior manager that appropriate dress for that company’s first-class cabin was nothing less than a suit and tie. In other words, he made it very plain to me that I had to travel in ‘plane’ clothes.
Earlier this week, I was travelling in a crowded Caribbean Airlines jet from Trinidad to Antigua when I received a jolt that shook me a bit.
Interestingly, it was not what we call an ‘air pocket’ or turbulence that causes us to clutch at our seatmates while the plane starts an abrupt descent into the ocean below. It was not the aircraft but my jaw that dropped as a young man, walking along the aisle back to his seat, showed off his seat by wearing his white short pants at a lower level than his green underwear. I had heard about pilots flying planes by the seat of their pants, but this person was in the cabin displaying his cockpit.
Wikipedia and other sources refer to this particular style as ‘sagging’. This made the young man what we in the region call a ‘Saga’ or ‘Sagger’ boy, defined by the Caribbean Dictionary as “a person boastful about his physical attributes”. While I am a little behind in my knowledge of fashion, I am not such a big behind as to dress like that, approve it or show mine off. As you grow older,
your physical attributes sort of bottom out, like the Trinidad or Jamaican dollar in a recession.
It is said that ‘sagging’ is a predominantly male fashion started in jails by gay prisoners who wanted to make abundantly clear their abundance and availability to the other inmates. A ‘Snopes’ fact-check acknowledges that the practice did begin in prisons, but it was caused by “ill-fitting, prison-issue garb”. Some of the prisoners were provided with clothing a few sizes too large and with the lack of belts (because of the risk of prisoners hanging themselves or being hanged by their inmates or jailors in their cells), the “oversizing, coupled with the lack of belts in the big house, led to a great number of jailbirds whose pants were falling off their arses.”
COMFORT AND NOT APPEARANCES
A gentleman sitting near to me who saw the young man’s display of his attributes angrily said that they should jail that body part together with the rest of the youth in some place where the other prisoners would recognise and accept his signal of readiness. In other words, they should “jail his arse”.
I recognise that in the past, air travel was an event infused with such glamour and novelty that it forced us to dress up for the occasion. However, today it is all about comfort and not appearances. While there are people calling for a dress code on planes, others want it to go further and insist that flying is no longer a ‘special occasion’ and is very much like riding a bus. They ask why we insist on a dress code on aeroplanes and not buses, taxis or other public places? The problem is that while the idea sounds good, it is not all plane sailing.
I remember once a seatmate of mine, declining my offer of assistance, hurriedly lifted her carry-on to put it in the overhead locker and her external covering, not exactly a dress, headed downwards to her ankles while her arms headed upwards and, while not entirely thong-tied, I turned my back on her quickly to deny the other passengers a view that might have pleased some of them but considerably embarrassed her. She pretended to read for the rest of the journey, eyes locked straight ahead.
These days there is ‘passenger shaming’. A few years ago, United Airlines made news when it denied boarding to a couple of teenagers who were wearing leggings. Recently, a woman on an American Airlines flight was not allowed on the plane because she was wearing ripped jeans.
Emily O’Connor went into a Thomas Cook plane heading to Tenerife wearing what is called a ‘crop top’ (aka a ‘bralet’). She was told that she had to cover-up the ‘garment’ or be removed from the plane. Even though she borrowed a jacket, the airline announced the whole episode over the loudspeaker. In 2016, JetBlue refused to let a woman remain onboard because of her ‘highthigh’ socks and shorts. In fact, Ellen de Generis featured the topic on one of her television shows and there is a Facebook page devoted to passenger shaming.
DISGUSTING IN-FLIGHT BEHAVIOUR
Recently, there were several posts of a woman drying her underwear using the air-vent on a plane. It clearly was not Victoria’s Secret. Another featured a Chinese woman using a chair in the passenger terminal at Chiang Mai airport to dry her underwear. “Taking advantage of a chink of sunlight,” is how someone described it.
An Australian news source reported, “Passengers have been caught on camera engaging in some pretty disgusting in-flight behaviour over the years. We’ve seen photos of passengers giving themselves in-flight pedicures – with one passenger literally peeling dead skin from his skin – and being caught with hands down their pants … while others have completely disrobed in mid-air.”
I am not sure how I would have reacted to some of those episodes but I believe there should be limits to what you wear and how you behave while locked in a cramped space with, sometimes, hundreds of other people.
USA Today advises, “Choose comfortable and supportive undergarments. Pick underwear without scratchy tags or any uncomfortable seams. A thong and strapless bra might not be the best choice for a woman, since you can’t easily adjust these garments mid-flight if they start to irritate you.”
What the newspaper doesn’t say is how you should deal with people whose use of the blower to dry underwear irritates you even more.
‘I recognise that in the past, air travel was an event infused with such glamour and novelty that it forced us to dress up for the occasion. However, today it is all about comfort and not appearances. ‘