What is the world coming to? A sweet young girl, recovering from breast implant surgery, weak and innocent, attempts to board a Southwest Airlines plane on a trip from filthy Tucson to sunny southern California. Her attire? A long-sleeve shirt (to cover up her boob bandages) and a denim belt. (Some called it a skirt, but due to its length the exact nature of the attire is still up in the air.) Cruel, heartless Southwest Airlines refused her passage on account of her belt/skirt. Too short, they said. Immodest, they said.
Well news flash Southwest; you aren't the modesty police!
And that's not the only problem. Southwest hurt far more than the self-image of a lovely lady with its anti-pretty policy. It destroyed dreams!
Readers, imagine for a moment that you are neither a buxom blonde with visible underwear, nor a prudish Southwest flight attendant imposing your puritan will across the skies. Instead you are the real victim in this case.
Put yourself in the shoes of the 16-year-old boy who, for the most groin-grabbingly delicious (thank you Simpsons) three minutes of his young life, sat next to this barely clothed and barely legal beauty before having her yanked away by cruel flight attendants. Left to writhe in two hours of terrible turgidity, you can't take the agony and open up the emergency exit at 35,000 feet. The plane splits in two and everybody dies.
What then Southwest? What then?
In all seriousness, the policy is ridiculous. Airline travel these days is crummy enough as it is without imposing a middle school dress code, especially on Southwest, where in-flight entertainment is the baby crying six inches away from your head and leg room means putting your feet out the window.
Every incidence of attendants cracking down on the attire of young women taking to the skies has been on a plane flying in or out of Tuscon. Maybe the lameness of the town just puts flight attendants in a "skin is sin" sort of mood. Maybe Tusconians just hate pretty girls. The world may never know.
What the world does know is that Southwest has done a half-assed job of trying to turn the outrageous crackdown into good publicity. Their "mini-skirt fares" promotion, which offers cheap flights, misses the point entirely. A better stunt would have been to offer the promotion to anyone actually in a mini-skirt. Hairy hilarity would ensue as men around the country put on miniskirts to get that $27 special to Denver.
