There’s been a great deal of talk in the media recently about obesity, and the problems that it causes for society. The issue first caught my eye back in November, when Canadian airlines were forced to comply with rules set in place by the Canadian Transport Agency (CTA), which state that obese people have the rights to two seats when they cannot fit in one alone. This extra seat is to be granted to them at no extra cost.

Australia seems to lag behind the rest of the world in disability policy, and this particular case is no exception. Currently, Qantas’ policy is to seat the customer who requires extra space next to an empty seat if there is one available. And if there isn’t? Tough cookie – someone’s going to be invading someone else’s space. Virgin Australia goes one step further backward in stating that they don’t even have a policy for dealing with this scenario.

But what does the person sitting in the adjacent seat think about this? According to a recent poll by travel website Skyscanner, 76% of travellers believe in the concept of a “fat tax” – that is, that overweight people should be forced to pay for a second seat if they are unable to fit in one alone.

As people are undoubtedly getting bigger and bigger, are airline seats accommodating this increase with wider and wider seats? Or, is it the reverse – with profit margins getting tighter for the airline industry, is there a reluctance to provide wider seats, on the basis that it may mean less tickets sold?

Most economy class seats are 17 inches, or 43.18 cm wide. A quick measure of my own proportions, as a relatively narrow male with a 34 inch waist shows that my approximate width is 36cm. But that’s certainly at the lower end of the scale. I recall, while working in the public hospital system as a physiotherapist, measuring at least one obese patient who had a hip width of 78cm. A recent study states that Australian women are evolving to be heavier over time, as well as shorter. That’s a very specific population, but if we had some (easily obtainable!) anthromopetric data about hip width over time, I’m sure we’d find it was expanding.

So it’s clear that the seat sizes on planes don’t necessarily suit a great deal of body shapes. But what about the attitudes of fellow travellers? When did we all become so callous and unsympathetic?

It’s not a huge stretch to link some of those attitudes to the hands-off approach of the Howard administration to issues like childhood obesity. See, John Howard believed that it wasn’t the responsibility of the government to regulate advertising for unhealthy foods during kid’s shows. By doing so, we were in danger of engendering a “nanny state.”

This conveniently allowed him to neglect the whole issue of childhood obesity. If you don’t recognise that it’s (at least partially) the government’s responsibility, you don’t have to worry about formulating policy for it.

The unfortunate corollary of this attitude is that by shifting the focus solely onto those who are obese, we relieve ourselves of all our responsibilities. We no longer have to change our attitudes towards people who are obese and overweight, let alone the size of our plane seats.

TV shows like The Biggest Loser provide us with the illusion that everybody, with a bit of determination, and a healthy dose of public shame (Exhibit A: Dance Your Ass Off) can lose large amounts of weight. But what about those who genuinely can’t? Those with thyroid deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, Prader-Willi Syndrome? Is it simply acceptable for those who aren’t obese to say: “These are the conditions of travel, if you don’t fit into them, you should cough up more cash”?

Still not sure? Here’s another example. On trains throughout Sydney, wheelchair users access trains via a portable ramp, which needs to be pulled out and put in place by platform staff. This usually causes a delay of a couple of minutes, but I’m sure if you polled their fellow commuters, you’d find that the overwhelming majority of people wouldn’t mind. Would it be fair to charge these people a premium for the extra services that they’re receiving? Aren’t they also inconveniencing their fellow commuters?

One of the wisest suggestions that I’ve heard about this topic has been to issue obese people with cards, given to them via their GPs. Such a system would work similarly to disabled parking. It would enable them to sit in specific seats designed for them, and eventually, this would become so ingrained that it would become the social norm.

However, such a system is extremely complex and would require a lot more planning and consideration before it could be implemented. Before this happens, we need to get a little better at being empathetic, and little worse at pointing the finger. We need to realise that changing attitudes is as important, if not more important, than changing airplane seats.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Current Affairs, Editorial, Keep n Busy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.