Plenty of articles I've seen on this story, including the one I linked to earlier, have referred to the attendant's agreeing to let her back on after she pulled down her skirt, raised her shirt, and buttoned her shrug. I don't know whether that info came from her or the airline, but I haven't seen where she's denied it. So really none of us know what her outfit looked like when she first boarded, which makes evaulating the attendant's judgment presumptuous as well. It looked to me on the Today clip like she had the skirt pulled as low on her hips as it could possibly go, the shrug buttoned, and the shirt resting looser and higher on her torso rather than taut and stretched out--for that occasion, anyway. It's hard to analogize any man's clothing item I can think of--ultra-low-slung baggy pants?--to a hiked-up micromini where likelihood of underwear exposure is concerned. I don't know that that's really what the flight attendant was reacting to--like anyone else I can only guess, but that would be my guess.
Personally I wouldn't have been bothered by it, I agree it would be helpful if their clothing guidelines were more detailed, and I agree asking someone to just cover up with a blanket is preferable to kicking them off. But it's not news that airlines have policies concerning customer conduct--I don't sit down and read through them every time either, but to me it's just common knowledge and common sense that airplanes aren't a smart place to push the envelope. The reason I gave examples of employee dress codes earlier was simply to illustrate that you can't anticipate everything people might try to get away with. Passengers getting drunk during the course of the flight is reasonable cause for complaint, but that's different from boarding drunk. Parents letting their child throw stuff, continuously kick seats, or run freely down the aisle screaming is reasonable cause for complaint, but that's different from expecting a toddler to sit silently with their hands folded in their lap the entire time. I've never heard of a man trying to board an ordinary commercial flight shirtless. I've seen catalogs use "bikini top" to refer to everything from the kind that looks like pasties on a string to the 'tankini' kind that extends down to the bellybutton, probably hence the vague "we don't have a problem if it covers all the right spots" answer. I think some of these counterexamples may be sort of grasping at straws. Either airlines have the right, as fancy restaurants do, to impose broad expectations that customers' clothing not be "lewd" or "patently offensive" or they don't, and if they do, I just don't see where she has a case. Especially since, in the end, she was allowed back on after adjusting her clothing.
Frankly I find it hard to care much about this case from either end though.
And, yeah, what's the point of having your mother accompany you onto the Today Show (and apparently be the one to file your customer complaint, too) anyhow? Was that another one of those 'helicopter parent' things? That was just weird.
- I have net nanny on my comp) 
