This is supersized entitlement.
Back in April plus-sized travel influencer Jaelynn Chaney made a bizarre demand. Not a request, but a “Demand for the FAA to Protect Plus-Size Travelers” in the form of a Change.org petition.
She believes larger air travelers who need a second seat should not be charged for the extra real estate. Who absorbs the cost? We do.
In a new interview with CNN Travel, Chaney doubled down on her call for the Federal Aviation Administration to mandate all airlines to adopt this policy.
“People with smaller bodies get to pay one fare to get to their destination,’ Chaney said. ‘And we have to pay two fares, even though we’re getting the same experience.”
But it’s not that we are smaller or thinner. It’s that we fall in a window of what is considered typical.
She is just simply bigger than the average person. In fact, Chaney is much, much bigger. She reportedly wears a size 6X.
This isn’t to shame Chaney for her size. This is to shame her for her delusion that airlines or the FAA need to overhaul the system to accommodate a small number of outliers — a move that, she admits, would ultimately inflate prices for everyone else.
‘We need the policies to be a little bit more standardized,” she added.
The policies are standardized, and the airlines’ standard is this in a nutshell: “Here are our seats. If you can’t fit comfortably, you are welcome to pay for a second one.”
It comes down to physics and economics. The FAA is not responsible for making you feel better about yourself. And airlines are running a business, not an airborne fat acceptance charity. If that were the case, they wouldn’t starve us with gloppy prison food and pinky-sized portions of pretzels.
Obesity is a major issue in America, and we don’t need to incentivize it. We need to make efforts to combat the disease.
Chaney’s activism is also emblematic of the increasingly common belief in our culture that the world has to shape itself to fit unique individuals, instead of individuals fitting in with society as a whole.
This narcissistic view results not only in a plus-sized woman demanding that others pay for her large body to fly comfortably, but in a trans TikToker melting down online over being misgendered, a Starbucks barista crying over working an eight-and-a-half-hour shift, or the trans activist Tara Jay threatening to shoot anyone trying to prevent her from entering a ladies room.
Then there’s another plus sized influencer, Big Curvy Olivia who last month blasted airlines for not having wider aisle calling the configuration, “discriminatory.”
We produce people who are simply unable to move about in the real world, which can be unkind, unfair or simply unwilling to participate in your own view of reality.
There are of course improvements like the American with Disabilities Act, which upgraded our world so more people can participate.
But this is not about accessibility. Chaney is able to travel. Just like a ballplayer with longer legs might want to upgrade to first class for more legroom, she has to shell out more clams to be comfortable.
Even more ridiculously, CNN quoted Air Passenger Rights founder Gabor Lukacs, who said “through that lens of human rights,” charging double is unfair.
Flying is not a human right. It is a privilege of this modern age that we can hop on a flying bird, if we can afford it. Chaney has chosen travel as her livelihood.
And isn’t that wonderful for her. But don’t expect the rest of us to foot the bill.