Being the mother of a tanty-tot brings on the worst of societal disapproval, and
that’s just amplified off the chart in a flying metal capsule.
It’s been a while since I flew on a plane – just once since covid threw a glitch in the works. In my previous life, I’d be on a big bird going overseas usually around six or seven times a year, so you could say I’m a seasoned traveller. And I loved it. But, having not flown for a while, I find that my desire to travel has literally flown out the door. Regardless, I’ve been thinking about planes and airports quite a bit recently. Firstly, the whānau has been making increasing murmurings about an overseas get together since one of them now lives in London, and secondly, in a few days I’ll be picking up my daughter and grandson from the airport. The little bloke is just 14 months old but has just discovered that protesting loudly about things that displease him is not only huge fun, it garners heaps of attention, and just occasionally, gets a result. Let’s call it out for what it is: a tantrum.
Planes and kids. There is, in my experience, nothing more horrendous than a tanty-tot on a plane. Being the mother of a tanty-tot brings on the worst of societal disapproval, and that’s just amplified off the chart in a flying metal capsule. Sitting next to a tanty-tot (when it’s not your own) is just downright ear-splittingly awful. In either case, all anyone wants to do is escape. And airports themselves are becoming increasingly creepy. There’s something entirely disconcerting about airports and it’s to do with the overt biopower exerted in that context. Body scans, eyeball scans, explosive testers, drug dogs, physical pat-downs, stern-faced customs officials, and ubiquitous cameras are de rigueur at airports these days, but what is more unsettling is the passive yet ubiquitous way in which we are all herded. Airports are more than just systems of control; they speak to a wider contemporary condition in which surveillance in our daily lives is the norm through digital technologies.
We are all accustomed to Google providing us with pop-up ads tailored to our browser history. Who hasn’t searched ‘cheap car rentals Wellington’ and then been inundated with car rental ads for the next month? Airports just extend this a little more intrusively. And, sheep-like, we comply with the panopticon-like conditions of airports, because we are aware that, on every level, we are watched. The toilet even flushes itself. Creepy.
You need to be a perfectly behaved human at airports. You need to walk where you’re directed to walk, wait where you’re directed to wait, eat where you’re directed to eat. Exception is not tolerated, and behaviour is policed not just by surveillance, by airport guards and by official channels, but also by more subtle, powerful channels: other people’s disapproval of errant behaviour. As the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk notes, “It is not just a matter of pacifically directing the herd which has already tamed itself; it is a question of systematically generating new, idealized, exemplary individuals”.
And this brings me to my next observation: “New, idealized, exemplary individuals” are in chronic oversupply at airports. Billboards flash perfect white teeth, slim bodies, tanned flawless skin, the latest haute couture fashion, the hippest of haircuts,
the vaulted arc of the most exquisitely manicured eyebrow, the freshest fragrances. Airport users must walk the gauntlet of kilometres of advertising, exhorting us both overtly and covertly to be what we cannot. The reason we cannot is that capitalism is
selling the unattainable. Over. And Over. And Over again. (I’m – eek – in my 50s now, and there ain’t no way those halcyon days of the bikini bod are ever coming back.)
Airports are the perfect opportunity for this assault on our personhood because the market is well and truly captured for two, four, six hours at a time, with nothing else to do but wander aimlessly through the endless duty-free shops that are cunningly designed to force you to walk through their entirety as you progress to the departure gate. Pity the mother of the toddler. Pity me. There is
no escape.
Words by
Stella Pennell
