A Bad Hair Day at the Airport
July 7th, 2011
Because they are so concerned with the “safety” of their passengers, the TSA has taken it upon themselves to make sure every part of a person’s body is searched for explosives or anything illegal. While their pat-downs are probably their most famous security measure (and most hated), they apparently decided to take things one step further: checking a person’s hair.
That is the story of Laura Adiele, who was getting ready to fly to Texas from Seattle-Tacoma airport in Washington State. After going through the scanner, she was told that her hair needed to be inspected. Considering nothing showed up on the full-body scan, she felt discriminated against because she was an African-American, and was the only woman with big hair to be given an extra search. After pleading with TSA officials, she was told to either submit to the hair search, or the police would be called.
According to Ms. Adiele, she was told that the TSA was required to search anything that “poofs” from the body (I can’t make this up). Unfortunately for her, she happened to wear poofy hair that day, making her eligible for the search, even though the full-body scan, which is just as intrusive as a pat-down, showed no evidence of contraband smuggled in her hairdo, and therefore should have been reason enough to not sift through her afro.
Sometimes I think they do this just to tick people off.
