SAN FRANCISCO—US Airways is defending its decision to allow a man wearing women’s booty shorts, thigh-high stockings and platform heels to fly days before a football player was arrested on a plane following a dispute over saggy pants.
We at Lip Service: News with Attitude are going to stay out of the racial, hypocrisy debate and just tell “Mr. or Ms. Thang” rocking the blue, “work it!”
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, six days before University of New Mexico football player DeShon Marman was arrested at San Francisco International Airport after he tried to board a US Airways jet with sagging pants, a man who was wearing little but women’s undergarments was allowed to fly the airline, a US Airways spokeswoman conceded Tuesday.
A photo of the scantily clad man was provided to The Chronicle by Jill Tarlow, a passenger on the June 9 flight from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Phoenix. Tarlow said that other passengers had complained to airline workers before the plane boarded, but that employees had ignored those complaints.
US Airways spokeswoman Valerie Wunder confirmed she’d received the photo before last week’s incident in San Francisco and had spoken to Tarlow, but said employees had been correct not to ask the man to cover himself.
“We don’t have a dress code policy,” Wunder said. “Obviously, if their private parts are exposed, that’s not appropriate. … So if they’re not exposing their private parts, they’re allowed to fly.”
Wunder would not comment directly on the June 15 incident involving Marman, who was yanked from an Albuquerque-bound flight after he allegedly declined an employee’s request to raise his pajama pants above mid-thigh level.
Police have said only that Marman’s boxer shorts were exposed, and his attorney said surveillance video would prove Marman’s skin had not been visible.
Police arrested Marman, 20, who grew up in San Francisco, after he allegedly refused the pilot’s orders to get up from his seat. He was booked on suspicion of trespassing, battery and resisting arrest, but San Mateo County prosecutors have not decided whether to charge him.
Marman’s attorney, Joe O’Sullivan, said that his client had been stereotyped by US Airways as a thug and that the airline was guilty of racial discrimination for asking Marman to adjust his clothes. Marman is African American.
“It just shows the hypocrisy involved,” O’Sullivan said after he viewed the photo of the cross-dressing passenger. “They let a drag queen board a flight and welcomed him with open arms. Employees didn’t ask him to cover up. He didn’t have to talk to the pilot. They didn’t try to remove him from the plane – and many people would find his attire repugnant.”
O’Sullivan added, “A white man is allowed to fly in underwear without question, but my client was asked to pull up his pajama pants because they hung below his waist.”
Click here to read the rest of the oddly controversial story on the San Francisco Chronicle.
Photo credit: San Francisco Chronicle
