Should fat people have to pay for an extra seat on airplanes?

In their pursuit of the endless, metastatic-tumor-like growth demanded by global capital markets, airplane seats have been getting smaller, in an effort to squeeze more of us into a fixed amount of space (while, at the same time, airplanes have been getting narrower, to save money on fuel. Eventually, they will figure out how to fit 800 of us into a 2-foot-wide plane. Why would you doubt me?). Usually, after a flight on one of these, I have two thoughts: one is I sure am glad I never have to do that again (let me have this fantasy) and the other is How long can this go on before I physically no longer fit on a plane?

One group of people who, of course, no longer have to wonder about this question is the morbidly obese. Due to the physical dimensions of their backsides, these people must reserve two seats if they want to fly. I suppose if airline seats keep getting smaller, they will have to progress to three seats.

Airlines don’t seem to agree on whether these passengers should have to pay for the extra seats or not. Southwest, for one, does not charge for the extra seat. I’m sure other airlines charge the price of two tickets to passengers of size. But is this fair? Can we consider the question logically?

I’ll admit that it is difficult to apply even-handed logic to questions about people who are so zaftig they can’t fit in airplane seats. For one thing, and unfortunately for them, they all look at least somewhat ridiculous, because their torsos have geometric shapes (spherical or ovate, often with a high degree of lumpiness) not normally thought of as humanoid. And if that were not enough, it is additionally hard to feel sorry for fat people because they can be plausibly said to have brought their difficult conditions on themselves, through their lifestyles.

And at a time when the rising cost of airline flights threatens to make travel, once again, the exclusive privilege of the rich, it can be galling to be forced to pitch in to help pay for somebody else’s two seats. If, after all, you have to pay for every seat you occupy, why should someone else get a free seat, paid for by everyone else on the flight? Where’s your free seat!

It’s tempting for me to think this way, because of the facts touched on earlier. But I hesitate, for exactly the reason I opened with: the airline industry’s pursuit of profit stops at nothing, and if we allow them to charge fat people extra for an immutable characteristic (their physical dimensions), then there’s nothing stopping them from charging the rest of us extra for our immutable characteristics.

“Wait,” you may say. “What’s so immutable about being fat? They could lose weight if they wanted to.” Yes, but they cannot lose weight today, and they have a flight to catch today. You have to remember the distinction between short and long time horizons. It may have only taken you a few months to lose those 15 pounds for summer, but these people have hundreds of pounds to lose. It’s the difference between taking a walk in the neighborhood park and hiking across America. It is longer than any ultramarathon and it is hard.

And the sad truth that every adult knows is that not everyone can do hard things. Some people weren’t raised right, and they never learned how to overcome challenges. Some of this group get an irreplaceable pleasure out of eating and feel like they’re missing out on the best part of life when they eat less. Some of this subgroup have subjectively difficult lives, and simply getting through the day leaves them with no energy for self-improvement.

And even for the highly motivated Fatty Patties who try to lose weight, being fat is a self-perpetuating cycle on a cellular level. The insulin resistance that comes along with eating too much all the time gives the rotundest among us a cross-tolerance with the hormone leptin, which causes the feeling of fullness and satisfaction after eating. After a certain point, fats never feel full; they never feel satisfied, even after cleaning their plates. And the insulin resistance itself prevents cells from making energy out of the food they eat.

Boombalatties, then, feel chronically undernourished, which I’m sure starts to fuck with their heads after a while. Indeed, the hormonal gaslighting can be so real that some morbidly obese folks develop delusions that they have ruined their metabolisms by undereating, and that this is the root of their struggle to lose weight. They’re trying to cope with the cognitive dissonance of “I am grossly overweight, and yet I feel so hungry all the time!” Obviously, once they’ve lost contact with reality in this way, they’re in rather an unhelpful frame of mind for weight loss, which must start, like everything else, in the mind.

All this to say, everyone wants to lose weight but not everyone is going to be able to, and for these people their fatness is an immutable characteristic, and they will die fat. This is just a fact of the world, and we have to learn to live with it.

“Living with it” does not include giving a free pass to companies who want to double-charge our chubbiest, who try to take advantage of fat people’s general unpopularity in American culture (notwithstanding the fact that most of us are fat) to squeeze more money out of this admittedly squeezable group of people.

Today it is fat people but tomorrow it could be parents: your bratty children have been shown to decrease profits by increasing staff turnover/discouraging air travel among the childfree/overusing the wifi/eating too many Biscoff cookies/anything, they could say anything, you think they need a real reason? As long as the group of people is easily identified and not currently a protected class under the law (as chunky folks are not), I see no reason the airlines could not get away with charging anyone extra under the flimsiest pretense.

Fat people just happen to be robbing the airline industry in a very obvious way: taking up an extra seat that could have gone to an additional paying customer. It seems reasonable, at first glance, to charge for the extra seat, but why would they stop there? Why wouldn’t they then start inventing reasons that the rest of us are costing them too much money, and that we need to start compensating them? I don’t think they should be allowed to treat any of us the way they currently treat fat people.

So I stand in solidarity with big fatties everywhere (who may prefer to sit in solidarity with me), because while their struggles may not be mine, our fight to endure the inhumanities of air travel has to be a team effort. We must not allow the airline industry to divide this house. In that recirculated-fart-filled tin tube, we’re all in this together.