Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Item One: Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. He has a very thoughtful summary of the Star Simpson story, which you may recall was the recent incident in which an MIT student triggered a bomb alert at Logan airport because she turned up wearing a t-shirt with blinking lights and other funny looking stuff. Plus she was playing with a roll of Play-Dough.

Prof. Jenkings also has good things to say about what this teaches us about the difference between dead-tree media and blogs, and also what this tells MIT students about how to dress for the airport.

Item two: Today's Miami Herald reprises the case of Kyla Ebbert, who was told she couldn't fly on Soutwest Airlines because she was wearing a short skirt, and expands it to discuss the online fashion police more generally. These print version of the article has a photo of the offending garments, which are certainly not eyebrow-raising by south Florida standards, and which the article tells us involve more fabric than the outfit Ms. Ebbert is required to wear on her job as a Hooters waitress.

In a separate incident, Southwest's fashion police also required a passenger to change what it called a sexually suggestive T-shirt or risk getting thrown off the plane. Apparently this sort of thing happens with some frequency. Apparently too much skin prevents airplanes from getting sufficient lift to fly or something.

Could the “no-fly rule” have taken on a new meaning?

Or is could it just be irrational, arbitrary, behavior on the part of (some) flight attendants? Consider this from Ms. Ebbert,

What really tops the whole story off is that Ebbert wore the same outfit on the return flight to San Diego later that day. A female flight attendant also took note of it, according to Ebbert.

“I was complimented by the stewardess on my return flight,” she said.