United Airlines Won’t Let Teen Girls in Leggings Ruin Your Inflight Experience

Because all customers matter.

We here at United pride ourselves on maintaining integrity on our flights which is why a gate agent “barred two teenage girls from boarding a flight on Sunday morning and required a child to change into a dress after […deciding] the leggings they were wearing were inappropriate.”

After Barring Women for Attire, United Airlines Defends Decision

Yes, we admit it: we shamed three separate young women about what they were wearing and forced them to change into an outfit other than leggings before they were allowed to board. United Pass flyers—who fly free as relatives of our employees—represent our company, and it is our firm belief that their dress would hinder the experience of the average paying United passenger. Rather than field what would obviously be thousands of complaints about “inappropriately dressed teenage girls in leggings on my flight,” we’d much rather humiliate these three under 16-year-old girls and prepare them for a lifetime of body regulation, especially since they’ll have to get used to it anyway. We all know that humans are at their best behavior on an airplane, and we here at United will not let Lululemon-clad teens ruin this vibrant in cabin environment.

For instance, what would we say to the average middle-aged white businessman who brings on board an entire plate of fried chicken that smells up the whole cabin, if two teens wearing leggings were seated next to him? Or a family of five who sits their three children in a row and let them pound their legs as much as they like on the seats of the passengers in front of them? There’s also this paying customer to consider: the freak who brings no carry-on bag, no headphones, no book who spends an entire cross country flight staring straight ahead like a sociopath. Surely if these customers saw two teenage girls in athleisure wear, we would lose this dedicated customer base. And we can’t risk the loss of woman who screams at the slightest bump of turbulence, nor can we afford to lose the business of man who completely wrecks the bathroom five minutes into takeoff.

United Airlines has to consider the middle-seat passengers who take off their shoes even if they’re not wearing socks, the passenger watching an R-rated movie with full-frontal nudity, even when sat next to children, and the passenger who will bring not one, but two emotional support animals on board, one of which is an adult German Shepherd, the other a pig. Imagine if two young girls at peak impressionability were allowed to stroll on board wearing skin-tight pants and sit down next to this diverse array of paying customers. We wouldn’t dare interrupt the nobility and grace of these passengers at repose as they travel through space and time, which is why we are doubling down in defending our actions. We will continue to body shame young and early so we know that the man ordering an unreasonable number of vodka nips who yells at the rest of his seatmates for 78% of the flight can fly in peace.

From all of us here at United Airlines, we’re here to ensure you will Fly the Friendly Skies Free of teens in leggings.