The outrage culture is always finding something new to be angry about. This time it was over a business choosing to enforce its rules about how representatives of the company should be dressed.
But that’s not how most people heard the story thanks to the media frenzy, social media and celebrities who rushed to attack United Airlines. NPR called the company’s responses “astonishingly tone-deaf,” a contributor to The Huffington Post reacted by telling Uber that United’s “Leggings-Gate’ Just Made You Look Good,” while Fortune’s associate editor Anne VanderMey penned an entire commentary headlined “Leggings Should Be Worn on Planes, and the Office, and Everywhere Else.”
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A day after the incident, a USA Today headline still made it sound like the airline opposed all leggings: “Leggings on a plane? Not so horrifying, say etiquette experts.”
The airline turned away a couple of teens from their flight because they were wearing leggings. A third was allowed to board after putting a dress on over the leggings.
This upset Bloomberg-funded anti-gun activist Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action. She instigated the social media version of pitchforks and torches by tweeting to @United after seeing a gate agent refuse to let the girls board a flight in Denver March 26.
Soon, the story spread to the news media. Many outlets criticized the airline in spite of the company’s legal right to enforce a dress code on “pass riders.” The barred girls (who boarded a later flight in other clothes) were flying on United Airlines’ dime. And United considers all pass riders representatives of its brand, so it maintains a policy against pass riders dressing casually on flights.
Celebrities who are undoubtedly used to having rules not apply to them were very upset with United Airlines’ decision and its defense. Patricia Arquette, William Shatner, Chrissy Teigen, Billy Eichner, Seth Rogen and others all argued with the company on Twitter.
Teigen tweeted she’d once worn just a long shirt and “literally no pants on” during a United flight. She threatened, “Next time I will wear only jeans and a scarf.”
