Emma Fitzsimmons (@emmagf), the former transit beat reporter for the NYT who is now the NYT City Hall Bureau Chief, cannot resist a transit Tweet when she sees a good one. Houston, we have a manspreading problem.
She's retweeted one from @dansaltzstein who has posted a picture with text over his frustrations with adjacent passengers taking up too much room on subway bench seats by spreading their legs beyond their hips. It is a big bug-a-boo, and it is committed by males.
Male bodies are different than female bodies, and as such, men's legs seem to be guided by a spring at their apex, that when seated pops their legs open like one of those spring clothes pins. (You might remember clothes pins.) But face it. Outdoor plumbing takes up more space than indoor plumbing.
Never mind that large people (read fat) take up more room than others, or that women tend to be carrying on the average three bags and gain width with their luggage, manspreading is being portrayed as just another misgiving of the male gender. Seat hogs are not always men.
Even when the subway has scooped out seats meant to designate individual seating, the average New Yorker of any age, any income, gender, short or tall, thin or hefty, with or without puff outerwear, carrying or not carrying anything, is going to be larger than the anorexic, naked Asian women who seem to have been the model width used by subway designers when they set out the specs.
I will give up my seat for a pregnancy looming overhead. And I will scoot over the best I can to allow more space, even though I am now the Senior Citizen those signs are pointed toward. But manspreading is here to stay. A campaign of awareness of it is not working.
Gaining seated space on a subway is like the Oklahoma land rush. You have to get there first.
http://www.onofframp.blogsptot.com
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