Passengers on commercial airlines are increasingly exposing their bare feet and using them for all manner of tasks in a move reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s notorious fetish, which plays out in all his movies…
With all the unexpected and unexpectedly disgusting stumbling blocks that flying can bring — from a man urinating all over business class to a disgusting sock-stuffed seat, from a woman being publicly weighed in the airport to a hostess being beaten with an in-flight phone — the last thing you need are your fellow passengers traipsing one of their dirtiest body parts all over the cabin and, even worse, into the confines of your very own seat.
Sadly, this has become an all too common occurrence in recent weeks, as a spate of stories detailing how passengers have not only been exposing their bare feet while flying, but dragging them across food consumption areas, using them to operate shared entertainment systems, and even sticking them between seats before making unwanted contact with other passenger’s faces…
Quentin might find it appealing, but we don’t.
WATCH: One of the offenders in action…
Before we get into the stinky details, it’s worth explaining exactly what we mean by the Tarantino connection, for the benefit of the blissfully unaware. As reported in full by Screen Rant, Tarantino has something of an obsession with feet. Close-up foot shots appear in almost every single one of his major movies, from Kill Bill to Pulp Fiction to Django Unchained.
Most recently, this took the form of Margot Robbie, playing Sharon Tate, showing the delightfully dirty undersides of her feet during a cinema scene in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, but perhaps the most infamous moment is when Tarantino cast himself as a character who had to suck tequila off Selma Hayek’s toes… in a script that he himself had written. King s***.
It seems that Taratinos’ obsession with tootsies has wormed its way into the common consciousness, or at least into the mind of a few particularly lasse faire travellers, who have set the internet alight with a series of incidents involving bare feet and barefaced rudeness whilst travelling on commercial aeroplanes…
The first — encapsulated nicely in the video above — involves passengers operating their touch-screen in-flight entertainment systems using their toes. Why? Well, for business class flyers, some claim that it’s significantly less hassle to use their feet than to sit up from their lie-flat beds. Tough life, right?
This isn’t just contained to the pointy-end of the plane, however, with some passengers in economy — particularly more diminutive passengers who have the requisite legroom to move their lower limbs around — preferring to use their feet than disrupt their perfect, sleep-ready blanket set-up with their arms.
Another of the foot-focused controversies centres around the humble tray table, which most decent people use for storing drinks and eating their in-flight meals. The only other acceptable use for this might be to prop up a laptop or store a book, glasses, notebook, or the like. What it should not be used for — under any circumstances — is as a footrest, especially for bare feet.
The total unacceptability of this was confirmed when the Passenger Shaming Instagram account posted this a few days ago before a slew of disgusted comments rolled in…
The final unfortunate appearance of bare feet has been from passengers who, clearly feeling constrained or imprisoned by their footwear, have removed their shoe mid-flight — this alone, though questionable, doesn’t constitute a massive mishap, so far as we’re concerned — but to then stretch out your legs under, around, or between the seats in front of you and make physical contact with the passengers in front, as this disgusted flyer was unfortunate enough to encounter, is an absolute no-no.
Next time you fly, keep in mind that while Tarantino may have a fascination with feet on the big screen, it’s definitely not a feature film you want playing out for cabin crew and your fellow passengers…