Women these days seem to have collectively decided that gym outfits are acceptable to wear whenever, wherever. Lufthansa isn’t okay with that. In fact, they go as far as to call it nudity
German fitness influencer Edda Elisa Pilz, 24, went viral last week after a gate agent blocked her from boarding a flight from Berlin to Austria mid-heatwave, looked her up and down in a sports bra and cycling shorts, and told her she wasn’t wearing anything. It was 30°C (around 86°F) outside. Pilz, who has over 550,000 followers on Instagram, was understandably confused. “What am I supposed to put on?” she said in a video posted to her followers. “What should I wear? It is clothing.”
The agent’s solution was a jacket from her carry-on—zipped all the way up. Only after she complied was she allowed to board—right behind, she noted, a group of men in tank tops and shorts fresh off a Mallorca trip who walked through without a second glance. “Men get straight onto the plane when they’re coming back from Mallorca,” she said, pointing out the ever-prevalent double standards.
Fitness Influencer Says Lufthansa Wouldn’t Let Her Board After Telling Her She Looked ‘Naked’
Lufthansa’s official response was essentially: we didn’t say “naked,” but we do reserve the right to police your outfit. The airline stated that the word reportedly used by the gate agent “does not correspond to our standards,” while simultaneously standing behind its conditions of carriage, which require passengers to wear clothing “appropriate to the nature of public travel.” That clause, like similar ones across virtually every major airline, is deliberately vague—which is the whole point. As CNN has reported, the lack of specificity hands enforcement entirely to individual gate agents, and women account for the overwhelming majority of publicized incidents.
The safety case for dress codes exists and is legitimate. Exposed skin on an inflatable evacuation slide causes documented, significant injury. Nobody’s freedom is being attacked when an airline asks them to cover up. Whether safety had anything to do with this particular call is something only the gate agent knows.
Pilz said she could live with rules, provided someone actually showed them to her. “I can accept rules,” she told her followers. “But the attitude was unacceptable,” Lufthansa said it reviews such incidents internally. The jacket came off the second she landed.
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