Brigid McDonald
speaker
24 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Brigid McDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
I mean, the hope is that no one sits next to you, like regardless of your size. I don't know anyone who's like, oh goody, a stranger's gonna get to be really cozy with me for a while.
So you kind of do that thing where you're like, you have the arm rest up. You're like rooting through your purse in the middle seat. People are passing. You're not making any eye contact. You are, oh my God, you've never been more interested in the thing that's at the bottom of your purse. You know what I mean?
I was the second row from the bathroom. So we're not talking about like prime real estate. I got in the window seat, as I always do. I put on my little seatbelt extender. No one was back there with me yet.
So I put my bag underneath the seat. I was buckled in. A man sat next to me in the aisle. There was a seat between us. You can tell that it's like the end of boarding. And flight attendants are closing the overhead compartments.
And so I was like, great, cool. Nobody's sitting between us. And I kind of like looked over at the guy next to me and was like, all right, like sick. And I felt like awesome, like zero anxiety, not a care in the world.
The main anxiety that I have does come from concerns about who's going to sit next to me. I'm like, dang, is somebody going to be sitting next to me that I'm going to have to be like rigor mortis my muscles so that I don't touch them and it's going to be awkward? Are they going to be somebody who's just like, cool?
So I'm sitting in my seat and I'm like, this is awesome. I'm about to be on vacation on a beach. No one's sitting next to me, feeling good, riding high. And then I see the gate agent who checked our boarding passes. I see her board the plane. And I don't know what they're checking for exactly, but they're doing their job. They're doing some things. They're checking their stuff.
So I wasn't really that phased. And then the gate agent came back towards the flight attendant that was in the back. They were talking. And I just noticed them talking. And I feel like they're looking at me. And I was like, don't get in your head, Bridget. And they're kind of having like, not a disagreement, but they're going back and forth.
And then I see the flight attendant say, no one is going to sit next to her. And all of a sudden the gate agent's walking towards me and her look on her face is like, I don't wanna do this, but okay. So she's walking over and she goes, ma'am, could I speak with you off the plane? Off the plane. Everyone is boarded. And I was like, oh my gosh. So then I start thinking to myself, has someone died?
Is this like, am I getting like, is something gone wrong? Like, and so I'm like, should I bring my stuff? And she says, no, no, you can leave your stuff. And then I'm like, okay, what?
And for any person at all, but especially like a plus size person who has been on a plane before, you know, I'm doing the like side, like crab kind of walk. I'm like trying to like switch my hips so that they're not like getting in everybody's face from the back of the plane.
And I was like, can you just tell me what's going on? And I'm going to be honest with you, I knew. Like in my heart of hearts, I was like, this has something to do with my size. And I knew it. And she said, the flight attendant in the back of the plane wants you to be deboarded and reboarded as per our customer of size policy.
And she was like, to be honest with you, I didn't even really see a problem when I boarded the plane and saw you. But she insisted. And so the tears are coming. I can feel them coming. They're welling up. And this poor guy, this male gate agent was like, I don't even really think you're big like that. And I looked at him and I was like, oh, I am, I'm big, but that's not illegal.
I mean, that's not, I can board a plane and be big. And then I said, is someone not able to board because of me? And they said, no. So is someone complaining about my size, the flight attendant? And then I started freaking out.
Like, I'm about to fly on a plane with someone who, in theory, one of the people responsible for my safety has decided that I need to be deboarded and reboarded for no reason other than just being labeled as fat. I just, I don't. And I started to feel like, should I get back on this plane?
She apologized several times and she apologized at one point and said, There is one flight attendant that's deadheading on this flight.
And I am going to walk you back down and make damn sure that they do not sit next to you because they could have chosen still to sit next to me.
I reboard the plane. I have been crying. I put my hat down. I do the crab walk back through the what feels like 100 rows. I get to my seat. The gentleman on the aisle stands up. I get back in my seat. I buckle it up. I face the window. I put my hat down and I cried for the better part of the next 75 minutes of this flight.
I felt like talking about it would open people up for commentary on me being fat. And I've done a pretty good job up to this point in my life to not really invite or welcome that in.
I was so shook up from that instance that I changed my flight and I followed their customer of size policy.
Showing 1–20 of 24 · page 1 of 2
Next →