Leave Fat People Alone

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Kevin Smith is mad as hell as he’s not going to take it anymore. The director of Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma, and, most recently, the Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan comedy flick Cop Out, was kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight on Valentine’s Day, allegedly for being too fat to fly. Southwest’s formal policy requires customers who cannot lower both armrests, or who “compromise any portion of adjacent seating,” to purchase two seats. Smith often purchases two seats when he flies on Southwest—he insists he does so only because “I don’t like people”—but because he was flying standby on this particular flight, he only purchased one seat.

Smith called his recent deplaning the worst experience of his life. “When you grow up fat, you learn how to navigate through a thin person’s world without calling attention to yourself… No fat person wants to stick out. We’re all kind of dying inside a little bit.”

Smith is a fat man fighting back, and, in a society seething with fear and hatred of body diversity, a lot of people are disturbed by his actions.

Some of us who have spent years fighting for size acceptance—or, as I would prefer to call it, body liberation—have wondered when we would see our Stonewall moment. Smith is a fat man fighting back, and, in a society seething with fear and hatred of body diversity, a lot of people are disturbed by his actions. For example, consider how convenient it is for the airline industry to deflect a customer’s anger over ridiculously small seats—I’m thinner than approximately 80 percent of middle-aged men and I don’t fit into one very comfortably—on to “overweight” passengers, a category that includes, according to our public health authorities, nearly seven out of 10 adult Americans.

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Leave Fat People Alone – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.