You’re all a bunch of slobs. And it’s time we have a serious chat about it.
Kudos to Sean Duffy, the US Secretary of Transportation, for addressing a festering and ever-deteriorating situation in this country — how we’re dressing in airports. In a word: poorly.
Or, as your grandma would say, “like something the cat dragged in.”
There are far too many people showing up to flights like traveling hobos. They’re wearing stained Garfield pajama pants and dragging their pillows and blankets through Terminal 2. Sometimes, their shirts can barely contain their guts and their shorts reveal more than they cover.
It’s a national disgrace.
Duffy, who is trying to up the collective standard in our nation’s air travel, has introduced a “civility campaign” to usher in a new “golden age of travel.”
Just in time for the Thanksgiving scramble, he wants to “jumpstart a nationwide conversation around how we can all restore courtesy and class to air travel.”
Outside of our shabby duds, Duffy urges us to be polite to fellow passengers, help pregnant ladies, thank staffers and refrain from turning the cabin into fight night at the Double Deuce. We’re on the plane to safely move from one city to another, not produce the next viral altercation.
“Dress with respect,” he says.
“You know, whether it’s a pair of jeans and a decent shirt, I would encourage people to maybe dress a little bit better, which encourages us to maybe behave a little better. Let’s try not to wear slippers and pajamas as we come to the airport,” he said in a video address. “I think that’s positive.”
In an era not too long ago, that was also understood.
It’s pathetic anyone needs to be reminded that there should be a distinction between how you dress in your pig-sty bedroom and how you step out in public.
But it’s also good to bring this issue into the public sphere with an earnest appeal to civility. Let’s acknowledge that this once-genteel mode of transportation has devolved into a showcase of the slovenly.
We used to have personal standards.
I recently discovered a black-and-white souvenir photo of my grandfather exiting a jet in his native Spain. In the snap, which was probably taken in the mid ’60s, he’s walking down the plane stairs wearing a natty dark suit and tie. Behind him is a woman in a skirt, capelet and chic silk scarf tied over her head.
Of course, that was a time when clothing was durable and silhouettes were classic and trend-proof. Before we even dreamed about a thing called athleisure.
Dressing for comfort didn’t exist.
And yes, it was also when air travel was much more civilized: There was space for your rear end and you didn’t need to elbow wrestle a traveling salesman for the armrest.
Now passengers are treated like cattle, shoved into uncomfortably snug chairs and forced to share those cramped spaces with people who wear pajamas in public.
Airlines haven’t given us any incentive to get all gussied up. But that doesn’t mean we should dress for dumpster diving.
Of course, we can’t just go back to the standard that existed last century.
You can’t keep people in stiff suits and prim dresses once they’ve experienced the magic of a cotton, spandex and nylon blend.
But Duffy doesn’t want to force us back into tailored suits and prim dresses. He simply wants us to quit being such pigs. There’s a happy medium between a blazer and tie and a cruddy sweatsuit.
His is a reasonable request.
When you look good, you feel good. And when you feel good, you’re less inclined to fist-fight the person in 12E because they mistakenly bumped you on the way to ask the flight attendant for another vodka soda.
This axiom also applies outside of TSA territory. Sweeping Tiktok now is the delightful quarter-zip movement, in which young black men are ditching saggy jeans and sweatsuits for fitted trousers and a neat, pressed quarter-zip top. The result, advocates say, is a polished look that changes their confidence level and how they’re viewed in the world.
A game changer.
As a culture, we took casual Friday and rode it off a sartorial cliff straight into the gutter. It’s time to pull ourselves out — and restore some personal pride.
