A plus-sized woman admitted that she sometimes struggles to use the bathroom during flights because plane aisles are just too narrow. Tiktoker @bigberryvip, known as Big Curvy Olivia, shared a video of herself trying to get down the aisle of a United Airlines aircraft. She was forced to turn sideways and wriggle her way down the plane since there just wasn’t enough space.
“So, this is an awkward topic but we’re going to go ahead and get awkward and talk about it,” she said in a video captioned “Flying while fat – Lavator edition.” She continued: “I don’t fit in a standard airplane lavatory at all. Forget the difficulty of having to get two seats to fly – accessibility to a bathroom is the number one roadblock for me when it comes to long-distance travel.”
Olivia went on to say that while some “wide-body aircrafts” do have wheelchair-accessible toilets that are “also big enough for a big person to use,” that’s not the case with all planes. That means if she’s in a smaller aircraft, she’d better hope she doesn’t have to pee.
@boberryvip Replying to @srtagringita Flying while fat – Lavatory edition. 🙂 #plussizeedition #flyingwhilefat #unitedairlines #plussizetravel #thicktoker #plussizeconfidence #fat #plussizetiktok #fattravel #plussizetraveltok #airplanebathroom
“So, if I’m flying on a narrow-body plane, I can’t use the bathroom and my maximum flight time is about six hours,” she said. “I’ve never had a problem with that before except once I came super close to having an accident on a flight from San Francisco to Chicago. There was some bad weather and my plane was rerouted – it tacked on an extra two hours to the flight and things got a little sketch.”
Olivia, who has just under 300,000 followers on TikTok, obviously struck on something many plus-sized travelers have experienced. Many came to the comments section to express their own frustrations, with one person writing: “I have had this issue as well. I got sick and tired of the embarrassment and self-hatred.” A second person mentioned: “Thank you so much for sharing! I often get so much anxiety about getting past people in the aisle seats because I’m so wide no matter which way I turn.”
Olivia’s request for planes to be more accessible is a reasonable one, though another plus-sized woman wants free plane seats to accommodate those too wide to fit in a single seat, as well.
