My sister was traveling from Paris this week on a long overnight flight. She decided to pay for a Business Class seat in order to enjoy the flight instead of suffering for hours in a cramped, miserable little space.
When she went into the Business Class section of the airplane, she was stunned to see that everybody else there was male. She was the only woman until a lady from China joined her. It felt like a striptease joint, she says.
I very much hope to be mistaken but this looks like evidence that, yet again, women economize at their own expense and don’t feel justified in treating themselves as well as men.
The need to sacrifice for the sake of parents, husbands, siblings, children, pets and potted plants is a guiding principle of many women’s lives. I see it everywhere.
Dear women, this has got to stop. You need to start doing things for yourself. Get yourself a massage, find a cool facial mask, slather it on your face and drop into a bathtub for an hour, buy a cake or two pounds of expensive fruit you like and eat them all without considering who might need this money or this cake more than you. Close the door to your office or your room and stick a note that says “Me time. Keep out!” on the door.
Of course, if you are a man who tends to sacrifice yourself, then you should stop doing that, too.
Remember, people who really love you, do not need your sacrifices. They need for you to be happy. If you can’t be happy for yourself, then make this last sacrifice and be happy for the sake of your loved ones.
Clarissa's Blog 
Words to live by. If I get that second job at LUSH, I plan on pampering myself much more, even if I can’t take a bath and enjoy bath bombs (Our landlady told us we can only take showers and have them be no more than fifteen minutes long, sheesh)
Jaime and I always try to take first class for flights longer than 4 hours, because we’re both over six feet tall, and leg room is important to us. No apologies from us for “wasting” that money, it means we don’t have to be miserable and come off the plane looking bowlegged.
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I had a dream that I came to visit you, and you and I went to Lush. And then Jaime came from classes and we all went to an Italian restaurant. That was fun! 🙂
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From a statistical point of view, women tend to be smaller than men, so economy class seats are probably often just as comfortable as business class ones for many women. I have ridden in first class and in economy class, and the difference in comfort is not overwhelming on most flights. It is not worth the extra money, especially when I would have to pay the upgrade. I seem to recall that the cost of first class on a trans-Atlantic flight is about ten times as much as the cost of economy class ($12000 versus $1200 round trip.) I don’t know how much business class costs, since I have never flown that way.
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The difference between economy and business class is quite substantial, regardless of one’s height. Being able to recline the seat fully and lie down as opposed to sitting for 7+ hours is definitely worth it. Difference in price for a two-way ticket between Montreal & Paris with air France is 1,000$ vs 2,000 (there is a promotion right now). And even though the difference in price is not ten-fold, it was all men on the flight.
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And here she is. 🙂
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My sister paid $300 extra.
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“economy class seats are probably often just as comfortable as business class ones for many women.”
They are not. I always took the cheap seats. I’m not a tall woman, nor was I overweight the last time I flew. I always ended up feeling like I’d spent the entire flight inside a French horn case.
That being said, the reason I took the cheap seats wasn’t because I didn’t like myself, or was worried that some man might be displaced from his entitled luxury business class throne my my selfish ass, but because I was not exactly able to afford anything more expensive than economy class. I don’t care for facials and such “pampering” either — such activities take me away from my keyboard and since they tend to involve things like water, soap, and greasy creams I can’t even read a book while they’re happening.
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For me, an upgrade to business class would be cost prohibitive. But if I could afford it, I’d do it. Well… Maybe not. I bet I’d start thinking of all the stuff I could do with the extra money.
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My first thought was about the wage gap between the genders. If an average woman earns less than an average man (and there are surveys showing the wage gap exists even if both work the same hours), than it figures that most women (together with lower earning men) won’t take Business Class. Also more men than women are in high paying jobs, which demand taking frequent flies. Add to this quite many women, who are prime supporters of children.
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I hate to say this because it is going to sound mean and I am generally a fan of nominatissima, but it doesn’t seem very long ago that people were donating their money to her to help replace a laptop. I have no problem at all if she chooses to spend her own money on first class flights rather than a new laptop (absolutely her own choice). But it strikes me as odd and, dare I say it, dishonest, to accept donations if one can afford to buy first class seats.
On the topic of women:men ratios in business class, I suspect some of the imbalance could reflect the sad fact that upper echelons of companies tend to be dominated by men. Many of these men were probably not spending their own money to travel business class but were travelling for work and so had their flights paid for through their companies. If the numbers of men and women in these types of jobs was more equal, perhaps we would see more women travelling business class.
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For an autistic who is 6 feet tall, first class seats are a medical necessity.
I know women who make tons of money and begrudge themselves a tiny little extravagance. And if it isn’t money, then it will be something else. Time, one’s own interests, hobbies, enjoyment, success. Women often find their identity through self-sacrifice, that’s the real problem.
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“For an autistic who is 6 feet tall, first class seats are a medical necessity.”
She didn’t say anything about autism. She just said that leg room was important for her. I completely agree with what socal_dendrite said.
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OK, folks, we will not be discussing who spends money on what in their absence because that is incredibly vulgar.
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“OK, folks, we will not be discussing who spends money on what in their absence because that is incredibly vulgar.”
Thank you, Clarissa.
For the record: The only time I travel on a flight that is more than five hours (or any flight at all, period) is once a year, to visit my mother and then come back to the mainland. My mother usually pays for a portion of the ticket, and my best friend from home works for Hawaiian airlines, so I pay about $200 for it, which I pay for with a combination of money from my work study job and odd jobs like tutoring and advocacy work.
Don’t worry though, I’m not visiting her anymore, since she are on bad/not speaking terms, and I’ve got two jobs now and I’m looking for a third.
I thought I would remind people though, that I never -asked- anyone to donate to me, though I did thank everyone who did later. Clarissa set up the laptop initiative out of the goodness of her own heart, for which I am always grateful, and I try to pay her back by being a good blogger who she can be proud to have sponsored.
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” I try to pay her back by being a good blogger who she can be proud to have sponsored.”
– And you are being very successful in that endeavor. 🙂
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If I could travel first class for that amount of money, I would certainly do so too 🙂 I should not have assumed that you were spending the thousands it would cost me to upgrade to first class on the once/18 mo trip I take to Europe to visit my parents. But the context of the comment was about it not being felt a waste of money, which implies that it cost a good deal of money.
Anyway, to return to Clarissa’s original point, I wonder how many women would deny themselves the extra luxury even if it only cost a little extra (as in this case)? The hypothesis of definition by self-sacrifice would suggest that many would. I am not good at self-sacrifice, and would jump any chance for affordable business class 🙂
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Clarissa, I found those last two lines to be very profound. Thank you.
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I’m glad you liked it. 🙂
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