dress codes

Gee, Thanks Airlines, For Finally Warning Us!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’m adding that memorable line from “Death Becomes Her” to the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive. I don’t think I’ll have much use for it—at least I hope I won’t—but it sure fits here.

In that scene, the awful aging star played by Meryl Streep has just paid a fortune to get dosed with a magic formula that restores youth and guarantees immortality. After she downs the glowing blue elixer, the mysterious woman who provided it adds, “And now a warning…”

American Airlines, Delta, and Southwest have issued a warning to flyers to avoid short skirts and shorts when flying. If a flight emergency forces a plane to land and passengers have to use a slide to “deboard,” the friction from the device can rip a passenger’s skin off.

Oh. Funny, I don’t remember people screaming in all of those airplane movies.

The slides have substances in their composition to maximize sliding speed, as the objective is to save lives, not ensure comfort. I am assuming we never heard of this peril before because those slides aren’t used very often. However, airlines have been in many controversies over dress code enforcement: why wouldn’t they use the “if you want to have your skin ripped off, go ahead, fly like that!” response?

Remember this post, about the fitness model who presented herself at the gate dressed thusly….

…?

Heck, if that stuff about the slides is true, after an emergency landing she would have ended up looking like one of the victims in “The Towering Inferno”!

“Better late than never” is often a rationalization (#35. The Tortoise’s Pass), but in this case, it’s nice to finally know the risk of short shorts and short skirts. I’m still wondering what took so long, however.

Ethics Quiz: the Narcissist Nurse

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The woman above, a nurse at a Georgia hospital, was told to go home and not to come back to work until she got rid of her flamboyant (I’m being nice) hair style. The woman—I don’t care what her name is—claims that the ‘do is culturally significant, whatever that’s supposed to mean. She also claims that it doesn’t interfere with her job, which I would dispute, and that the hospital is discriminating against her race by telling her that is isn’t professional to dress up like an exotic bird …

…to care for sick people.

I think the lawsuit is a loser: I’m sure the administrators will say convincingly that no one, male or female, black, white or puce, would be allowed to work with that on their head. The woman is an exhibitionist. Personally, I would be wary of trusting any hospital that allowed someone with such dubious judgment and misaligned values to be charged with patient care.

Also, as someone whose week long stay in a hospital last summer featured being awakened out of a deep sleep to have some nurse’s head four inches from my face, the sight of that hat hair could spark a cardiac episode.

But hey! I can be convinced otherwise. So that’s why…

Today’s Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz is…

Is a nurse who wears her hair like that meeting minimal professional standards?

Chess Ethics: The International Chess Federation Makes “Professionalism” Look Ridiculous [Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Did the world go nuts last week and I missed it? Curmie just sent me this crazy story, and I though it was a gag.

For those of you who don’t follow international chess (that is, all of you), the wonderfully named Magnus Carlsen is a five-time world chess champion from Norway. He has held the No. 1 position in the FIDE world chess rankings since July 1, 2011, indisputably making him one of the greatest chess players of all-time, right next to household names like Raul Capablanca, Ruy Lopez, and Emanuel Lasker. Yesterday he was kicked out of the World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in New York after chess’s governing body FIDE barred the Norwegian from participating in the tournament.

Why? He was wearing bluejeans.

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Addendum To The Senate Dress Code Fiasco: Althouse’s Ethically-Muddled Analysis

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, I’ve been nice to Ann lately, but as she does sometimes, she botched her analysis of this story badly, and attention should be paid. I’ll have Ann’s words in italics, and my comments without them…

Ann wrote, beginning with the NPR quote, “The Senate’s move to relax its unofficial dress code has led to a surprising development: an official dress code,”

“It’s not the way it always goes, but it shows the risk of seeking a new rule. You may end up with a reinforcement of the old rule. More precisely, it shows the risk of ending the enforcement of an informal practice. It led to the formalization of the old practice into an official rule.”

Why is that a “risk”? The risk of ending the enforcement of an old rule is that the consequences the old rule was designed to prevent occur. There were reasons for the old rule, and as Herman Kahn once told me, people have a tendency to take traditions and standards for granted after a while, forget why they existed, and have to learn, often painfully, all over again. That’s what happened here. As the Ethics Alarms motto goes, “When ethics fails, the law steps in.” Fetterman was unethical, and Schumer, rather than being a responsible leader and telling him to shape up, eliminated the ethical standard he was breaching instead.

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See? Cultural Rot CAN Be Reversed!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Senate yesterday unanimously passed a bill that requires members to follow a dress code that will include a coat, tie, and slacks for men. Just a bit less than three weeks ago, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a vulgar and obnoxious capitulation to lowered standards of public conduct and a blatant endorsement of the King’s Pass had ruled that all Senators could dress like Pennsylvania’s senatorial slob, John Fetterman, whose favorite attire is a sneakers shorts hoodie ensemble. This was an itsy-bitsy microcosm of what the party of Fetterman and Schumer are attempting to inflict on American society, and, incredibly, the vox populi rebelled. It seems that a lot of Americans don’t like the idea of their elected representatives in the U.S. Capitol appearing in public dressed like Frankenstein’s Monster on vacation.

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Once Again, Our Leaders Inflict “The King’s Pass” On Our Culture…Well, A Variation: “The Slob’s Pass”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has directed the chamber’s sergeant at arms to end the centuries-old rule requiring male U.S. Senators to wear a suit and tie on the Senate floor, with members of the upper house to wear modest business attire. This move was clearly made by Schumer to relieve pressure on Frankensteinian Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa), who has been violating the Senate Dress code and appearing in shorts, T-shirts, and hooded sweatshirts since he returned from a hospitalization for depression. He had been criticized and mocked as a result—as he should be.

The King’s Pass, Rationalization #11 on the List, is a corrosively backwards reaction by organizations to unethical conduct that violates organization norms and values, the value in this case being “respect”—respect for the institution, respect for the public, respect for the United States of America. If the organization’s (company’s, institution’s, industry’s, government’s, sports team’s…etc.) member who is breaching norms, rules, laws and values is deemed sufficiently powerful, important or popular, the rules and norms are not enforced when the King’s Pass strikes. When the most prominent member of a hierarchy is allowed to violate standards of conduct, the conduct of those of lower status will deteriorate in response: this is what “the fish rots from the head down” means, with the head in this case being a brain-damaged one.

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Pop Ethics Quiz: The “Offensive” Mask

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Apparently a passenger was kicked off an Allegiant Airlines flight for wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon!” mask. he was told to remove the mask and replace it. He refused.

Let’s make this quick:

Was the airline fair and reasonable to insist that he remove the mask?

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Dress Code Ethics (Again) From The “Oh, Come ON!” Files: The Immodest Fitness Model

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

bodybuilder-1

Two days ago, American Airlines denied boarding for Deniz Saypinar, a Turkish-born fitness model traveling from Dallas-Fort Worth to Miami because, the carrier explained to her, its conditions of carriage require all customers to dress “appropriately,” and her outfit wasn’t appropriate.

Ya think? That photo above shows how she presented herself at the gate.

“The customer was advised of our policy and was rebooked on a subsequent flight. The customer has since arrived in Miami,” the airline’s rep said.

Deniz is in great shape; I wonder why, if she was going to grandstand like this, she didn’t just wear a g-string and pasties and go all the way with it. I do not believe for a second that she expected to be allowed on the plane dressed like that. She wanted to set off a controversy and win herself Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, while giving feminists something to shout about.

“You will never believe what happened to me at Texas Airport,” first non-American citizen to win the US National Bikini Fitness Competition in 2021 wailed to her 1 million followers on Instagram as she posted her attire.

Oh yes I will!

“I am an athlete, and now I have to wait here until the morning,” she wrote. “I like to wear feminine clothes that reveal my femininity, but I never dress in a way that will offend anyone. I’m mature and civilized enough to know what I can and cannot wear. I don’t deserve to be treated like the worst person in the world for wearing denim shorts What separates us from animals if humans can’t control even their most primitive impulses? I feel insulted. They wouldn’t let me on the plane because I wore these shorts in the United States.”

Uh, I wouldn’t call that an exactly fair description of what happened. She wasn’t treated “like the worst person in the world,” although she should have been treated as a narcissist and ruthless self-promoter who deliberately wasted the time of airline staff and caused a pointless controversy just to get her name and figure publicized. And she wasn’t rejected as a passenger for “wearing denim shorts.”

” What separates us from animals if humans can’t control even their most primitive impulses? ” has to win an irony award: it is the model who can’t control her primitive impulse to display herself in places where such displays are rude and disruptive. Decorum and manners in public also separate us from animals. Wearing reasonably modest clothing in public is basic civility, showing respect for others.

What do you want to bet that she wears that kind of outfit and then, when some little fat guy stares at her, gets indignant?

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Mid-Day Ethics Tidbits, 11/4/2020: Sort-Of Post-Election Edition, With Yummy NONE Election-Related Items!

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

1. Ay Caramba! Does anyone think that former Playboy model Eva Marie has a legitimate complaint because she was kicked off a Southwest flight along with her seven-year-old son for wearing this outfit on board?

Eva Marie

I don’t. She said she was “humiliated and embarrassed” when a Southwest Airlines flight attendant told her she couldn’t board looking like that. I don’t believe it for a second. She was seeking publicity. “When they threatened to remove me off the plane if I didn’t have a change of clothes, I felt completely humiliated, embarrassed and highly offended,” the Instagram influencer said of the incident. “I’m an A list member for SWA and have a credit card with the airline and I have perks that allow any person traveling with me to fly free because of my high status with the airline. So even as being a loyal customer with them, I felt like the other women on the plane were judging me based on my attire and they were saying my breasts are too large,” she added. “Well, that’s something I can’t help.”

No, you shameless jerk, they were judging you because you won’t observe even minimal social conventions, like not going out in public looking like a stripper mid-routine. If she is a “high status” member of the airline, then she is presumably aware that it has a dress code. It is overwhelmingly likely that she pulled this as a stunt to gain Instagram users  to “influence,” and exploited Southwest to do so.

The airline would be fair and reasonable to ban her from flying.

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Ethics Observations On Kayla Eubanks, The Southwest Airlines Flying Slob

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

southwest-dress-code-64

Chicago’s Kayla Eubanks is indignant because Southwest Airlines staff refused to allow her to board her flight, saying her attire was not fit for travel. low-cut top was “lewd, obscene, and offensive.”  Eventually a pilot gave her a cover-up T-shirt so she could get on the plane. Once in the air, she took it off.

Eubanks complained via Twitter, writing, “Y’all I was KICKED OFF my @SouthwestAir flight because my boobs are ‘lewd, obscene, and offensive.’ I was told that passengers may look at me in my attire and be offended.” In her following tweets, Kayla wrote,

“I really wanna know why @SouthwestAir is policing my clothes like this. How will my shirt impact my flight, for myself, the other passengers, or even the pilot?…Y’all have a dress code for CUSTOMERS who pay to get on a plane?…It’s the constant policing of women’s bodies for me.”

Posting a  video of one of Southwest’s female gate employees fumbling to answer Eubanks’ questions about a dress code, Kayla added. “[she] practically did cartwheels to ensure that I wouldn’t get on this plane y’all. I was held at the gate for 30 minutes because of my shirt.”  On the video, Kayla can be heard telling the sympathetic pilot who eventually loaned her the shirt, “I have to leave my tits at home? Obviously not.”

Stay classy, Kayla.

Following the flap, in which the mainstream media sympathizes with Eubanks, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines told the New York Post that the company reached out to Eubanks directly to issue an apology, and refunded Eubanks’ fare

“Regarding our policies, each situation is very different, and our employees are responsible for following our Contract of Carriage, available on our website,” the spokesperson explained. “According to the material posted online, the company ‘may, in its sole discretion, refuse to transport, or may remove from an aircraft at any point,’ a passenger who engages ‘in lewd, obscene, or patently offensive behavior, including wearing clothes that are lewd, obscene, or patently offensive.”

Observations:

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