Inquiring minds wanted to know. This San Diego Union-Tribune article is 7 years old, but seems to have had a "leg up" on seating standard changes when it was written in 2004. And, I note from the article that in Charleston, WV, when you order a "double-wide" you may not be requesting housing! Of course, we should have known that it is a NC company that is the expert at butt scanning. Probably something they picked up from NASCAR.
Girth of a nation leads to wider seating options at many venues
By Jenifer Goodwin
STAFF WRITER
April 11, 2004
Union-Tribune
At 19 to 22 inches wide, the seats at Petco Park are larger than stadium standards.
Humvees on the freeways. 5,000-square-foot tract homes. Big Gulps, venti lattes, all-you-can-eat buffets and the Atkins diet. (Goes to show you how much you were consuming before if a diet of steak and cheese can actually help you slim down.)
There's no doubt about it: We're a super-sized nation. So it should come as no surprise that not only are our seats expanding, so are our chairs.
Seat-size standards, set about 70 years ago, are going by the wayside. Stadiums, theaters, school auditoriums and city halls across the nation are installing wider seats to accommodate our ever-growing girth.
Petco Park, following the lead of recently built stadiums in Seattle, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, has done away with the 18-inch-wide seats that were standard issue in stadiums in decades past. Instead, each peanut-scarfing patron has from 19 inches to 22 inches to spread out.
Seats on new trains in Philadelphia allow 21 inches per rider, 3 inches more than those on older trains.
When ferry operators on Seattle's Puget Sound noticed passengers were sprawled on the floors because there was no room left on the previously adequate benches, they decreased capacity by 10 and added extra seats.
Also, venues ranging from a Charleston, W.Va., municipal auditorium to the Lamb's Players Theatre in Coronado have discreetly purchased double-wide seats 44 inches for extra-large patrons.
"Everybody is asking for wider seats and wider row spaces," said Barbara Patterson, vice president of Specified Products, which provided the XL seating for the Lamb's Players Theatre. "They want all of the chairs to be comfortable and accommodating to a larger person."
You can blame carbs, fast food or our coach-potato culture, but abundant research shows America has a big problem. Nearly 65 percent of U.S. adults are overweight, up from 46 percent in the late 1970s, while nearly 31 percent are obese, according to the American Obesity Association.
The number of extremely obese adults, or those who are at least 100 pounds overweight, has quadrupled since 1986 to about 4 million, according to a RAND Corp. study.
Research has also shown a slight uptick in height, at least for Americans whose families have been here for a few generations. (Recent immigrants tend to be shorter.)
But it's our ballooning backsides that are causing the most consternation.
At 6 feet 3 inches tall and 350 pounds before gastric-bypass surgery, Devon Neubauer, general manager of the Spreckels Theatre in downtown San Diego, has had his share of seating issues.
On airplanes, stuffing himself into coach left him with bruised thighs. On a trip to Manhattan theaters, he had to stand in the back.
Even at his own theater, he wouldn't even consider trying to squeeze into the 17-inch-wide balcony seats, installed in 1912. (Newer seats on lower levels are roomier.)
"People who are large enough won't even come to the theater because they can't sit in the chairs," said Neubauer, who has since dropped 135 pounds. "People don't want to make a scene when they're obese. So you either don't go or you wedge yourself in, even when you're in pain."
Stale standards
Our broadening bottoms are prompting several industries, from cars to clothing, to rethink their assumptions about what "average-sized" means in America.
[TC]2, a North Carolina-based consulting firm, has done three-dimensional body scans of some 10,000 volunteers for the garment industry. The SizeUSA survey, released last month, found that not only are we getting larger and heavier, but our shape is changing.
Men now have broader shoulders and thicker middles. Women's waists and hips are spreading beyond their shoulders. "We're no longer an hourglass shape; we're pear-shaped," said Karen Davis, marketing communications specialist.
According to the standards currently in use, which are based on pre-World War II data, the average woman is a size 8, with a 27-inch waist and 37-inch hips.
But the SizeUSA study found that less than 10 percent of women were so svelte. Most were significantly bigger, with 69 percent having hips greater than 40 inches, making today's average woman closer to a size 14.
Seat sizing dates to the same pre-World War II and post-Depression era. A 1930s edition of Architectural Graphic Standards, the comprehensive guide for the building and design industry, listed 18 inches as the minimum acceptable seat width and 21 inches as "ideal" for theaters and stadiums. Restaurant seating is even smaller, with 15-inch chairs considered acceptable.
Those seating standards haven't changed since, to the chagrin of larger Americans.
Jane Rickert, a 6-foot-1, 187-pound massage therapist from Ramona, avoids the booths at certain restaurants because they're too tight a fit. An avid traveler, she begs gate agents for the exit row.
Even in the plush seating of newer movie theaters, Rickert and her two sons both well above 6 feet opt to crane their necks in the front row so they don't have to cram their knees against the seat in front of them.
"I've always had to cope with being uncomfortable," said Rickert, a member of a basketball team for women 50 and up. "They simply do not make chairs large enough. It's time for them to do something about it."
Finally, it seems, they are.
When the Los Angeles Lakers moved from the Great Western Forum to the Staples Center, spectators got an added treat: as much as 3 inches of extra seat room.
On the Puget Sound ferries, "the Coast Guard was having a fit" when it noticed passengers plopping down in the aisles, said Susan Harris, customer information manager.
Ferry officials tried to remedy the situation by allowing fewer passengers on board. After commuters complained, ferry officials agreed to add more seating this time, using 21 inches instead of 18 inches as their benchmark.
"We called (the Seattle Mariners') Safeco Field, and they said, 'Absolutely, you have to go to 21 inches,' " Harris said.
While the smallest seats at Qualcomm Stadium are a mere 18 inches wide, the tiniest ones at Petco Park are a full inch wider (with the exception of a limited number of bleacher seats that allow only 18 inches per derriere).
"We haven't installed 18-inch seats in 10 years," said Jack Rogers, vice president of sales at Hussey Seating Co., which installed Safeco's and Petco's seats.
Health concerns
Despite the growing realization that Americans need roomier seating, logistics and cost guarantee it's going to be a long time before every venue has larger seats.
Also, the industry most notorious for cramped seating the airlines seems to be successfully ignoring cries for more space for the masses.
Most coach seats are a smidge over 17 inches, not much wider than a fast-food tray. According to the SizeUSA survey, 6 percent of men and 19 percent of women simply don't fit, their hips spread wider than 17 inches when sitting down.
(First-class seats are usually about 3 inches wider and have about 7 inches more legroom.)
The steerage conditions have led to brisk sales for the Knee Defender, a plastic device that protects the kneecaps of taller passengers when those in front of them try to recline their seats.
Cramped airline seating is also causing health and safety concerns.
A 2001 study funded by Britain's Civil Aviation Authority concluded that coach passengers do not have adequate space to assume the emergency "brace" position, that rows were so close together they would cause major obstacles during an evacuation, and that having little room to stretch can cause DVT, or deep-vein thrombosis, dangerous blood clots in the legs.
Strangely enough for an industry as tightly regulated as the airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration has no minimum space requirements for seat or row width.
As for buildings, John Ray Hoke Jr., editor in chief of Architectural Graphic Standards, thinks the 18-inch seat standard will be history in the next edition of the book, due in a few years.
What should replace it?
Maybe 21 inches would work as the minimum. But even that would be uncomfortable for Hoke's 6-foot-4, 275-pound frame.
"I'm a big man," he said. "I want my full 24 inches."
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