On May 18, burlesque dancer Maggie McMuffin, 26, was informed by JetBlue that her shorts weren't flight-worthy. A representative for the company, McMuffin says, told her that her zebra-striped shorts were inappropriate. If she couldn't find something else, she'd have to take another flight. Earlier, McMuffin had flown without problem on a JetBlue flight from New York to Boston, but her JetBlue flight from Boston to Seattle was proving to be a problem.
McMuffin didn't have anything else to wear with her long-sleeved sweater and thigh-high socks, so she went to another terminal, where she purchased a pair of bigger shorts. Then she was allowed to board. McMuffin says she felt "body-shamed" and "slut-shamed." JetBlue says its employees were just doing their jobs: "The gate and onboard crew discussed the customer's clothing and determined that the burlesque shorts may offend other families on the flight." In an attempt make things right, JetBlue issued her a $162 credit and reimbursed her for the cost of the new shorts.
"We support our crewmembers' discretion to make these difficult decisions," JetBlue said. So who was right?
You don't know it when you see it
In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously opined of hard-core pornography in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, "I know it when I see it." Of course, we don't know what we see. We only know what we think we see. By empowering its employees to assert subjective opinions of the appropriateness of dress of its passengers, JetBlue gives its representatives the right to use their personal opinions to discriminate against its customers. What's next? Problematic turbans? Troubling "ANARCHY NOW" T-shirts? Disturbing Afros?
Social media bites
You could almost predict that McMuffin would share her story on social media. And that gave her the power. Online, McMuffin can frame the story how she likes and control the first impression of what actually happened as it rolls out across the internet. This means JetBlue gets framed as the Big Bad Company, and McMuffin gets positioned as the discriminated-against customer. JetBlue rebrands itself as the airline that sides with anonymous families whose children may be psychologically damaged by zebra shorts.
You sound sexist
"@JetBlue Subscribes to such sexist ideals as preventing women from getting home because of how they dress," McMuffin tweeted. "So maybe it's just this pilot." The idea of a man getting kicked off a flight for wearing his shorts too short is almost laughable. Although, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong was booted from a Southwest flight in 2011 because his pants were sagging too low. And in 2010, director Kevin Smith was kicked off a Southwest flight for, he said, being too fat. But things get far thornier when the individual in question is a woman, she's a burlesque dancer, and what you're essentially accusing her of is, at its core, being too sexual. JetBlue may be better off avoiding weighing in on whether or not their female customers' sexuality is appropriate or not. If the pilot had a problem with McMuffin's sexuality -- well, that's not her problem, that's his problem.
