South Korean DJ and producer DJ Soda says she was prevented from boarding an American Airlines flight due to her sweatpants, which she says the airline deemed “inappropriate” and “offensive”.
The musician born Hwang So-hee shared her account of the incident on social media, claiming that she “was forced out of the plane and was harassed to take off my pants in front of the flight crews at the gate”. She said she felt “humiliated” by the incident, which took place Wednesday (April 26) as she was getting ready to fly from New York to Los Angeles.
I GOT KICKED OFF FROM @AmericanAir flight and they harassed me to take off my sponsored @RIPNDIP ‘F**K YOU’ sweatpants in front of people to board again. pic.twitter.com/YU0TrhZjry
— djsoda (@dj_soda_) April 26, 2022
According to Hwang’s posts on Instagram and Twitter, she was wearing pants sponsored by American streetwear brand RIPNDIP, which had the words “FUCK YOU” printed on them.
“I have never had an issue with wearing this pair of pants before in my many months of touring in North America,” she wrote, “and they did not have any problem with me wearing it at the time of check-in nor when I sat down at my seat.”
Hwang says she was later approached by a staff member before takeoff who instructed her to retrieve her belongings and leave the flight as her pants were “inappropriate” and “offensive”.
She wrote: “I had an important meeting set up in LA on that day, so I could not afford to get off this flight. I pleaded to stay on the flight but was ignored by the staff and the flight attendants. I even offered to get changed but the request was denied. What happened next was horrendous.”
“With my broken fingers, I hardly ended up taking off my pants in front of the whole crew and standing half-naked while they still refused to board me on the flight,” she claimed on Twitter. “They even sarcastically commented that I could have taken off my pants earlier.”
With my…