(PCM) Everyone is in an uproar over the news that United Airlines recently banned two young women from their flight from Denver to Minneapolis for wearing leggings. According to the airline the women were not wearing “proper” attire and that unless they agreed to change their pants they would not be allowed on the flight.
The Washington Post also reports that a third young woman, who only happens to be 10-years old, was also found to be wearing leggings and was asked to change her pants as well before being allowed to board the flight. This is just preposterous! She is literally a 10-year old little girl! Leggings are standard attire for someone her age, in fact, leggings are now considered pretty standard attire for any and all women these days regardless of age.
While we agree that there are certainly times when leggings are not always the classiest way to dress depending on how they are worn, however paired with the correct top and either boots or sneakers they can look absolutely adorable. Without seeing the way in which these young ladies, minus the 10-year old, were wearing the leggings it can be a bit hard to judge why United Airlines would have come down on them so harshly.
The 10-year old little girl ended up putting a dress over her leggings, however the other two young ladies pressed the issue and were not going to be allowed to board their flight. They did eventually board the plane after changing their clothing. Many feel that it is not up to United Airlines to police the way in which women and girls dress, however on the other side of that there is the issue of dress code appropriateness which is left up to the discretion of the airline gate agents.
Political activist and founder of the gun safety campaign “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America” Shannon Watts just so happened to be at the gate when all the drama was going down and tweeted out the incident to her over 32,000 Twitter followers.
1) A @united gate agent isn’t letting girls in leggings get on flight from Denver to Minneapolis because spandex is not allowed?
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 26, 2017
The above tweet is what opened up #leggingsgate and even celebrities such as Chrissy Teigen, Sarah Silverman and Patrica Arquette joined in to voice their frustrations with United Airlines policies. The airline responded to Watts with the following tweet:
@united @shannonrwatts Rule 21 implies removal of passenger once aboard carrier. Also, ‘properly clothed’ isn’t defined. Leggings improper? pic.twitter.com/pgp4wLEOSA
— wyatt nerp (@reaganschmagan) March 26, 2017
However the story does get a bit more involved as it seem that the young women were traveling via passes as part of the United Airlines employee benefit travel. The women’s attire did not meet the protocol and adhere to the policy for employee benefit travel. We have dealt with this a lot in the past ourselves and while many of the airlines policies for company dress code attire is a bit dated that is a small price to pay for being able to fly for a significantly discounted rate or perhaps even for free.
@SarahKSilverman The attire of the teenage pass travelers did not meet our policy for company benefit travel. ^KP
— United (@united) March 26, 2017
Perhaps United Airlines should get on board with some of the other airlines such as American or Delta who have updated their dress code policies for employee and companion travel, however before #leggingsgate gets too far out of control, people should know the whole story.
