Woman accuses Jetstar of slut shaming: ‘I doubt you’ll be able to board your flight dressed like that’

‘Team Leader was in the mood to publicly shame me,’ says Serah Nathan

A woman has accused an Australian airline of “slut shaming” after staff criticised her outfit and told her to sit elsewhere while she waited to board a flight at Sydney airport.

Serah Nathan, 33, was about to fly home to Melbourne on 3 November with Tigerair when the incident took place.

Documenting the experience in a Twitter thread, Ms Nathan claims she and her boyfriend, with whom she has a long-distance relationship, were sitting in the communal airport lounge when they were approached by a member of staff from rival budget airline Jetstar.

Ms Nathan describes sitting “on [her] partner’s knees facing him” and talking about “mundane nothingness” before a female employee intervened.

“Sit on a separate seat because there are children watching,” the woman allegedly told Ms Nathan.

Ms Nathan claims there weren’t any children around, and her and her partner were bewildered by the instruction.

“I wasn’t treating a domestic airport terminal like a strip club,” she said.

Minutes later, Ms Nathan says the employee returned with a Jetstar team leader, who reiterated the need to move, saying: “You’re disrespecting the parents here by straddling your boyfriend.”

According to Ms Nathan, the staff member continued “her slut shaming mission”, adding: “I doubt you’ll be able to board your flight dressed that way but either way you can’t sit at this boarding gate.”

Sharing a picture of her outfit, which consisted of full-length jogging bottoms and a crop top, Ms Nathan, who is half-Sri Lankan, implied there was a racial undercurrent to the request.

“I note the Caucasian woman sitting opposite me wore a very short dress but was left to her own devices,” she said.

Despite wishing she’d stood her ground, Ms Nathan said she was “too shocked, too embarrassed, too enraged and too humiliated.”

“I complied with their s****y request,” she added.

To add further insult, Ms Nathan told news.com.au that she received some irregular responses from a Jetstar customer service employee when she later complained online.

After sending a picture of her outfit and asking if there was anything inappropriate about it, Nathan received the reply: “I have checked the photo and I think you are very beautiful, your boyfriend must be very lucky to have you.”

They added: “I don’t think it’s appropriate to sit on your boyfriend’s knees since there were available seats… I believe that they were only protecting other passengers and also you as you are in a public place.”

Nathan finished her Twitter thread: “If this situation was born from a couple of narky employees who couldn’t bear to see a woman of colour taking a final few minutes to connect with her long-distance partner, then you have a problem on your hands, Jetstar.”

A Jetstar spokesperson has said its Sydney team “dispute the allegations they were acting this way”.

They said: “We are speaking to our airport team to better understand what happened.

“We don’t tolerate discrimination in any form and our teams dispute allegations they were acting in this way.

“We apologise to Serah for the manner in which her query was handled by our online customer service representative which fell well short of the standards we expect.”

It’s not the first time a woman has been told to cover up on a flight. In March, a 21-year-old woman was threatened with being offloaded from a Thomas Cook flight at Birmingham airport because her clothing was “inappropriate” and could cause offence.

Emily O’Connor, a trainee accountant from Solihull, was wearing a black crop top and high-waisted trousers.

On boarding the aircraft, she exchanged pleasantries with the cabin crew who were greeting passengers, then walked along the aisle to take her seat.

Ms O’Connor told The Independent: “I’d only gone a few steps when one of the cabin crew said, ‘Excuse me madam, you’re not dressed appropriately and you’re not complying with our code’.”

She was shown a copy of the inflight magazine, which has a note on page 113 reading: “Customers wearing inappropriate attire (including items with offensive slogans or images) will not be permitted to travel unless a change of clothes is possible.”

A member of cabin crew then told her: “If you don’t get changed we’re putting you off the flight.”