All Aboard the Panty Express! Deadly Serious "Fear of Flying" Fashion Dos and Don'ts

Airport security has gone too far. (Think "plane" panties as a teaser pun, get it?) I'm no prude but I will not publicly carry my undies and personal toiletries in a clear plastic bag for the world to see. Tacky, tacky, tacky!

I'd rather wear them on my head and be done with it -- keep reading, I have a bold new idea for this, actually, and would like your thoughts (maybe we'll call it Victoria's Security Secret!)

When tacky is the uniform of the day, even tacky can be done with better style than plastic bags -- it arguably might be worth it if: a) I had to fly and b) all this authoritarian rule-making for innocents actually worked, and c) it was the only thing that DID work.

But geez, when the policy answer is: d) none of the above, then naturally someone like me will balk. And if someone like me is an irreverent policy analyst, someone like me can be expected to notice sooner or later, that airports are too much like public schools these days. I DON'T have to be there, and they DON'T work, and even if they did, they certainly aren't the only thing, much less the best thing.

Public schools and airports are foundering, perhaps past the policy tipping point as boondoggles -- humiliating, violative, dangerous, time-wasting, dignity-robbing, soul-sucking, at least compared to what you'd think the most resourceful and resource-full democracy in the world would demand and support of its citizen services.

We recognize that Fear of Flying is secretly erotic, right? Then why not use our own liberated western erotic sensibility to our advantage! Take the issue seriously, take social problems seriously, but don't take ourselves or the vagaries of fashion too seriously. Fashion has the meaning we choose to attribute to it, period. We need some meaning that works to our advantage for a change.

Though Isadora fears flying (in all possible senses of the word), she forces herself to keep traveling, to risk . . .her life in pursuit of her own brand of liberation. How she finds it and loses her fear is what Fear of Flying is all about.

SO.
As soon as the public starts to listen to the Creative Class, instead of the Classless Creationists, I have a simple fashion change that can change everything. Freedom-lovers need a New Badge of Courage (it needn't be Red although red is a lovely color for ladies underwear) -- here's how a parade of panties and knickers can safeguard USA-UK life, liberty and pursuit of happy flying, all at the same time, in an age when fear of terrorism has lured us to some truly terrifying policy regressions:

Wanna solve our airport terrorist screening problems today, FREE, with a low-tech, high-speed, high-percentage method? My practical proposal doesn't force anyone to do anything nor deprive anyone of anything, nor does it discriminate in illegitimate fashion. (Fashion - that word keeps coming up!) It doesn't depend on demonizing either common objects or innocent people, nor must it wait to develop new science and technology.

In other words, no metal detectors; lie detectors; curbside inspections; civil liberty intrusions like body cavity searches, racial profiling and personal data mining; explosive-sniffing dogs, financial or spectrum analysis.

And it's particularly elegant, I think, because takes an official "war on terrorism" tool used for evil at Abu Ghraib and transforms it into a weapon of personal empowerment, for truth, justice and the American Way.

It's not the bad apples, it's the bad barrels that corrupt good people. Understanding the abuses at this Iraqi prison starts with an analysis of both the situational and systematic forces . . .

It is at once spontaneous, light-hearted and scientifically proven as a simple and effective way to separate Islamic terrorists from the tourists and business travelers of the free world. Even better, to let them efficiently separate themselves or choose not to. . .

All we need to do is use our heads for a jaunty pair of panties -- a no-brainer!

Most airport screening stations will be streamlined under my new policy, to let those cheerfully wearing a pair of panties on their heads pass through without even slowing down.

Instead of banning belt buckles, nail files and now shampoo and water bottles, toothpaste, laptops and cellphones, etc etc. removing shoes, hand-searching bags and bodies - put a pair of panties on your head, have a good flight!

I think this would feel like real freedom to freedom-lovers, whatever their race or creed. The few folks who espouse rigid fundamentalist ideology that forbids them to use the secular western Panty Express lanes, could self-select into the intense scrutiny lines, where they'd all be treated like everyone else who won't sport a pair of ladies panties on his head in good humor. Or choose alternate transportation, or an alternate destination -- go visit some country unwilling to consider such offensive yet eminently practical arrangments for their own air travel.

I think it could spawn a perfect-fit fashion revolution for free liberal societies that prize individual choice and privacy but also would like to survive that enviable liberty.
Blue jeans and head-panties, the new icon for the new American traveler.

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