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176 20 Access to the Sky Airplane Seats and Fat Bodies as Contested Spaces Joyce L. Huff As Michel Foucault (1979) has pointed out, since the eighteenth century Euro-American cultures have conceived of the body as adaptable, able to achieve and maintain socially prescribed standards. In the twenty-first-century United States, this body has come increasingly to be seen as capable of adapting itself to spaces constructed to meet the needs of corporations rather than those of individuals. For example, mass production, a process that accommodates manufacturers’ desires to maintain high profit margins by producing goods quickly and cheaply, assumes that the consumer’s body is mutable and will alter to fit into preconstructed spaces, such as off-the-rack, rather than tailor-made, clothing. In Enforcing Normalcy, Lennard J. Davis (1995) notes how easily the notion of the adaptable body, with its supposed ability to conform to norms, comes to serve as the basis for a social imperative that compels individuals to strive for normalcy. Although Davis articulates his critique of coercive social norms in relation to disability, his insights could just as easily apply to anyone whose body falls outside the parameters of today’s narrowly defined notion of the “normal.” In fact, the very notion that individual bodies are adaptable endorses a fiction of absolute corporeal control, when, in fact, our bodies resist our control in numerous ways. Although it is frequently argued that niche markets are currently replacing mass markets, and that consequently products are now tailored to meet the needs of specific targeted groups rather than those of a hypothetical average individual, the notion of an adaptable body remains central to the manufacturer’s vision of the consumer . Clothes marketed specifically to larger women, for instance, still come in standard sizes with fixed proportions to which individual bodies must adapt. In fact, such clothing is usually marketed along with products such as “foundation garments,” which are designed to facilitate this adaptation. The recent debate over Southwest Airlines’s decision to enforce a long-standing policy requiring large passengers to pay higher fares highlights the ways in which the imperative to normalize may serve corporate interests at the expense of those of individuals. In June 2002, Southwest Airlines announced its intention to make passengers with hips spanning over seventeen inches pay for two airline seats. Southwest Access to the Sky 177 claimed that the policy was created in response to customer complaints: “Nine out of 10 customer complaints are from passengers who get squeezed in their seats by obese neighbors” (Nielson, 2002, p. E4). An anonymous ticket agent echoed this reason when she told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Probably 90 percent of the people who complain to us in writing are people who say they paid for a whole seat but didn’t get it because the person next to them was so large” (St. John & Zamora, 2002, p. A17). Southwest’s decision sparked a national debate over the rights of fat passengers. In fact, when fat activist Sandie Sabo discussed the policy on the Fight Back! Talk Back! radio show hosted by consumer advocate David Horowitz (not to be confused with the conservative pundit of the same name), the issue prompted 407 posts to the show’s online forum. Southwest defended its policy by proclaiming its dedication to serving its customers: “It is certainly not safe, comfortable, or fair for a person who has purchased a ticket to be left with only a portion of a seat or no seat” (Barrett, 2002). But fat activists challenged the sincerity of the airline’s commitment to their customers—when the customers in question happen to be fat ones. For example, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) took the airline to task for failing to meet the needs of fat passengers. “We feel that today’s aircraft simply are not equipped to deal with larger passengers,” said NAAFA spokesperson Jeanette DePatie . “We at NAAFA don’t want to take anyone else’s space and don’t believe anyone should have to be uncomfortable, but at 17” to 20”, airline seats are very small” (Blickenstorfer , 2002). Southwest’s reasoning obscures the fact that the limitations on the amount of space allotted to each airline passenger are artificially constructed by both the airlines themselves and their regulatory agencies to suit their own needs. Thus, far from being limited to a discussion of the safety, comfort, or rights of individual passengers, fat or thin, the ensuing controversy...

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