United Airlines Says No To Leggings In Bizarre Dress Code Enforcement

Just when you thought sexist dress codes were relegated to schools, United Airlines proves that the patriarchy is alive and well. Of course, you already knew that.

Dress codes in schools have been disgustingly sexualizing young girls for basically their entire existence. Crazy how boys can wear whatever they want but if a girl wears something that shows her shoulders all hell breaks lose. In recent years there’s been an influx of students standing up to unfair dress codes at their schools–claiming that schools should just teach boys to stop getting “distracted” by girls instead of making the girls tailor their clothing around the boys.

But this weekend, United Airlines proved that young girls can’t even travel without the patriarchy telling them what is and isn’t okay to wear. It all started when a bystander saw a few girls being told by United Airlines that they couldn’t wear leggings on a flight–something probably many of us have done ourselves in order to be, you know, comfortable while hurling through the air in a steel tube.

Of course, she tweeted this interaction:

But don’t worry, United responded pretty quickly–doubling-down on this policy.

You’re probably thinking that maybe this was an entirely inappropriate outfit worn by an adult woman. Well…not exactly.

And by that time the entire thing had gone viral, and just about anyone who had flown United was weighing in.

And Watts found herself under attack for tweeting about the incident.

United later claimed that the passengers were United pass holders–meaning they were employees or eligible dependents and are required to wear “business attire” on flights. But what is “business attire” for a kid?!

Thank goodness for Patricia Arquette, amirite?! It seems like a strange time to enforce the dress code. The point is that women and girls are pretty much always the ones who have dress codes enforced on them. And the last thing that these young girls needed was more attention and scrutiny on them because of what they were wearing.

Related Story: Reminder That Emma Watson Can Dress However She Wants

So hey there United, why not take a look at what you’ve just said to a bunch of young girls and then go put yourself in time out for your actions to save us the trouble of boycotting.