One time, I flew first class on an airplane, because when I checked in they offered me a fifty-dollar upgrade, and when you are a fat person with fifty dollars and somebody offers you a 21-inch recliner instead of a 17-inch trash compacter, you say YES. It was a new world up there, in front of that little magic curtain, among the lordlings. I was seated next to a businessman in leather shoes that cost more than my car, and behind a man who kept angrily attempting to sell a boat over the phone even after they told us to stop making phone calls.
The first rule of first class, apparently, is that there are no rules. (The second rule is don’t let the poor people use the rich people bathroom.)
I wondered if my fellow first-classers—all virility and spreadsheets—could discern that I was a fraud, that I could only afford the upgrade because my job covered the rest of my ticket. I may have betrayed myself when the flight attendant asked if I’d like a “special drink” before takeoff and I yelled, “A SPECIAL DRINK?” and then ordered three. Why just have coffee like some row-26 peasant when you could have coffee, ginger ale, and a mimosa!? This, as I’d been assured by the airline industry, was the life.
As the flight progressed, first class got less exciting. At some point, once the initial thrill of being adjacent to a four-figure boat sale had worn off, I realized: These special drinks weren’t remotely special. This roast beef sandwich, though presented with a cloth napkin, was in no way luxurious. (Also, “sandwich” is a rather generous term for a microwaved wad of airborne gray beef.) My first-class chair wasn’t a plush throne stuffed with Richard Branson’s hair, as air travel’s mythology would have you believe—it was simply an average-sized chair with a human amount of leg room (as opposed to coach seats, which are novelty-sized file drawers with a elfin amount of leg room). It wasn’t unbearable. The highest praise I can give it is that it was adequate. It had succeeded at being a chair instead of a flying social experiment about the limits of human endurance. The rich aren’t paying for luxury—they’re paying for basic humanity.
For me, the primary advantage of flying first class was that it precluded the dread. I didn’t know about the dread until the fall of 2013—the first time I got on a plane and discovered that I didn’t quite fit in the seat. I’ve always been fat, but I was the fat person that still mostly fit. While I couldn’t fit into regular-lady clothes (more bejeweled tunics covered with skulls, cherries, and antique postage stamps, please!), and I had to be careful with butt safety (I once Godzilla’d an entire lunch setting while trying to sidle through a Parisian cafe), I was still the kind of fat person who could move through the straight-sized world without causing too many ripples. Until I couldn’t.
It had been an incredibly busy year for me professionally—I’d probably flown twenty times in the preceding eight months, and there’s nothing like a steady diet of stress and Chili’s Too to keep the waistline trim—and one day I sat down and it just didn’t work. I was on a flight home from Texas, and the flight out there had been fine. Suddenly, on the return flight, I had to cram myself in. I mean, I know I ate that brisket, but I was only gone for two days! I’m no butt scientist (just two credits away, though!), but how fast could a person’s butt possibly grow?
If you’ve never tried cramming your hips into an angular metal box that’s an inch or two narrower than your flesh (under the watchful eye of resentful tourists), then sitting motionless in there for five hours while you fold your arms and shoulders up like a dying orchid in order to be as unobtrusive as possible, run, don’t walk. It’s like squeezing your bones in a vise. The pain makes your teeth ache. I once spent a tearful eight-hour flight from Oslo to Seattle convinced I could feel my femurs splintering like candy canes. It hurts.
Much worse than any physical pain is the anxiety—the dread—of walking up the aisle and not knowing what type of plane you’re on. Every model has different seat widths and belt lengths, which also vary from airline to airline. Am I going to fit this time? Will I have to ask for a seat-belt extender? Is this a 17-incher or an 18-incher? Is the person next to me going to hate me? Does everyone on this plane hate me? I paid money for this?
I have, in my life, been a considerably thinner person and had a fat person sit next to me on a plane. I have also, more recently, been the fat person that makes other travelers’ faces fall. Being the fat person is worse.
Here’s how I board a plane. I do not book a ticket unless I can be assured a window seat—I will happily sit in the very back row, or change my flight to the buttcrack of dawn—because the window well affords me an extra couple of inches in which to compress my body to give my neighbor as much space as possible. It’s awkward and embarrassing to haul and cram myself in and out of the seat, so I also prefer the window because I’m not blocking anyone’s bathroom access. I’ve learned from experience that emergency exit rows and bulkhead rows are often narrower, so those are out. My preflight anxiety begins the day before, when I remember that I have a trip coming up. I arrive at least two hours early, even for domestic flights, to preclude any risk of having to run, because the only thing worse than being fat on a plane is being fat, red, sweaty, and huffing on a plane. I go to the bathroom multiple times before boarding because, again, I avoid getting out of my seat at all cost, even on international flights. (The path from fat-shaming to deep vein thrombosis is short and slick.) I linger by the gate so I can board as early as possible and be the first one in my row; that way I don’t have to make anyone wait in the aisle while I get my body folded up and squared away. As I pass the flight attendants at the front of the plane I ask, discreetly, if I can have a seat-belt extender, to minimize the embarrassment of having to ring the call button once I’m seated and let my seatmates know they’re next to the too-big kind of fat person. Finally, I press myself up against the wall like a limpet and try to go to sleep, avoiding any position in which I might snore and remind everyone about my fat, lumpy windpipe.
That’s the amount of forethought, anxiety, and emotional energy that goes into every single flight. Fat people are not having fun on planes. There is no need to make it worse.
Just a month or two after the first time I didn’t fit, on a crack-of-dawn flight from New York City to Seattle, I had my first ever, um, disagreement with a seatmate. Despite my online irascibility, I’m pathologically polite in person, so face-to-face hostility is foreign to me. I’d almost missed the plane—I was that person staggering on board just before the doors closed—and I’m sure this dude thought he was going to have the three-seat row all to himself. He was about my age, maybe midthirties, an average kind of Jon Gosselin–looking guy. Probably works in an office; hangs out at, like, an Irish pub because he’s too old for clubs but still wants to hit on chicks; has always wanted to learn to surf but will never get around to it. I don’t know, just a guy. I flashed him an apologetic smile and pointed to the middle seat. “Hey, sorry, I’m over there.” He didn’t respond or make eye contact, just glared blankly at my hips. Then, as I went to put my bag in the overhead bin, I heard him mutter something sour.
“[Something something], say excuse me.”
I froze. Was someone being a dick to me? In person? At seven a.m.? In an enclosed space? For no reason? When I have a hangover? And we’re about to be stuck next to each other for the next five hours? I’m used to men treating me like garbage virtually, or from fast-moving cars, but this close-quarters face-to-face shit-talking was a jarring novelty.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he muttered, still refusing to look at me.
“No,” I said. If I’m going to make a living telling women to stick up for themselves, I need to do it too. “You said something. What did you say?”
“Nothing,” he repeated.
“No,” I repeated. “What did you say? Tell me.”
“I said,” he snapped, “that if you want someone to move, it helps to say ‘excuse me’ and then get out of the way. You told me to move and then you just—” He gestured with a large circular motion at my body.