According to an obscure, hard-to-find (because it's non-existent) manual, The Most Commonly Asked Questions by Airline Passengers, the top inquiries as people board planes are:
Does this seat make my butt look fat?
Where do I put my legs?
It started without much attention at 36,000 feet altitude.
American Airlines announced it will be reducing seat pitch (the distance between each row) for three rows from 31″ to 29″, and for the remainder of the cabin will be reducing seat pitch to 30″. (On top of that, American will be shrinking the size of some of the bathrooms on the plane.)
Lest you think seat dimensions are just wild ass guesses as to what will fit, Boeing has a patent to something called The Personal Space Model, a formula that accounts for seat pitch, width, and similar quantifiable measurements, along with more subjective elements of passenger perception of space.
In truth, it turns out there's a lot of complicated REAL SCIENCE involved in fitting butts into seats. But I want to focus one small fact contained in the Boeing Model:
Leg room and seat width account for 60% of the average traveler's sense of comfort.
According to Independent Traveler.com:
The Standard Airline Seat: 17.2 Inches Wide; 31-32 Inch Seat Pitch
For comparative purposes:
Office Chairs:
Width 20"
Width of office chair seat back 17.75"
Distance from seat back to end of knee when sitting comfortably 26.5"
Distance from seat back to end of knee when sitting in a position in which one might be able to doze 31"
Movie theaters (Stadium-style)
Seat back width: 20"
Seat front: 18"
Elbow-elbow: 23"
Seat Pitch: 37.5"
Church Pews:
The Ecclesiastical Rules of 1252AD exempted all forms of church seating from comfort considerations
So despite scientific proof, your sense of comfort is pretty much being ignored as seats are narrowed, and legroom is reduced.
Following closely behind the airline industry's great idea, New York's subways decided to follow suit.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) recently began a public service campaign which actually asks men to sit with their legs together.
Yes, the way men have traditionally sat in public since before the invention of wheels is now known by the elegant name of "MANSPREADING".
And it's not just a product of American Values...other countries are on this bandwagon as well. Glance over the rules they have in Spain. (A country I chose purposely because of the strange disconnect in my mind of telling men they cannot sit with their legs spread, but they can run down narrow streets being chased by bulls.)
It's official on subways and planes; I can only imagine it will soon be an issue in movie theaters, on trains, ships, concert halls, and church.
"Dear Patrons, for the convenience of others, please: no talking, silence your cell phones,
remove crying children, and close your legs. Thank You!"
It's easy to control manspread on planes. The mechanical restrictions pretty much dictate the angle of physical leg spread and encroachment possible. (It's a math thing.)
But beware everywhere else where benches and pews are standard! The Anti-Manspreader Coalition may soon turn their narrow aim to all forms of masculine comfort while sitting. (I'm quite sure the whole manspeading issue is an evil plot driven by feminists whose supreme goal is to make men squirm.)
From a Common Sense point of view, traditional thought says a person should be comfortable when sitting. Afterall, we invented chairs because rocks were too damn hard. So why have we allowed tradition and the opinion of Queen Victoria to tell us that one of these methods of sitting is acceptable, but the other is not?
Nonetheless: watch for it: Anti-Manspreading Is Coming!
For more watch this video produced by the NYT:
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