Where Did All the Stewardesses Go?

In his 1997 box-office hit Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Mike Myers plays an MI-6 agent cryogenically frozen in 1967 and awoken 30 years later. Boarding an airplane for the first time, he cries, “Here’s the stewardesses! Bring on the sexy stews!” “Excuse me,” one of them replies. “Did you say ‘stewardess’? We’re called ‘flight attendants’ now, thank you very much.”

What happened during his Rip Van Winkle years? One enjoyable way to find out is by reading Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants(Duke University, 304 pages, $22.95), a lively new book by Kathleen M. Barry. It combines all the strengths of a scholarly monograph—extensive archival research, a solid historiographical framework—with the kind of stylish layout and eye-catching illustration more common in books for the general reader. And Barry writes with clarity and wit. She tells a complicated story, but engrossingly.

First, a disclaimer. The author is a friend of mine from her tenure as Mellon research fellow at the University of Cambridge, which makes me something less than an impartial reader. That said, the book really does have a great deal to offer.

Femininity in Flight begins in the 1930s, when the nascent commercial airlines made the transition from employing (white) men as stewards to hiring young white women as flight attendants. These were the pioneer days before finely upholstered armchairs, drink service, or pressurized cabins, when flying was both uncomfortable and widely perceived as dangerous. In an effort to reassure passengers that the planes were safe and homey, the airlines consciously made their service different from that on trains. Instead of smiling, white-gloved black Pullman porters, who were expected to perform for tips (and it was a performance; Pullman porters were among America’s most ardent and radical unionists), airlines employed white women, for a sense of racial unity and calm. “The passengers relax” when the plane hits turbulence or the storm clouds open, explained The Atlantic Monthly. “If a mere girl isn’t worried, why should they be?” The first stewardess was hired in 1930, and by 1937 women outnumbered men almost two to one among those working in the cabin.

Until well into the 1970s, airlines enforced strict physical and age standards on stewardesses. In the 1930s they were expected to be about five-foot-four and weigh no more than 115 pounds; later, these numbers rose to five-foot-eight and 130 pounds, tops. They were also expected to be extraordinarily attractive. In the 1960s, Eastern Air Lines ran an advertisement with the headline “Presenting the Losers.” It showed 19 frowning all-American beauties who were “probably good enough to get a job practically anywhere they want.” But they hadn’t passed muster at Eastern, which demanded the very highest level of poise, intelligence, and good looks. “Sure, we want her to be pretty . . . don’t you? That’s why we look at her face, her make-up, her complexion, her figure, her weight, her legs, her grooming, her nails and her hair.”

In keeping with such standards, the airlines didn’t allow women who were married or older than 32 (35 at a few liberal carriers) to keep working as stewardesses. Therefore the turnover rate among cabin crews was amazingly high. In 1955 the average career of a flight attendant lasted just 27 months.

At the heart of Barry’s story is a tension between labor and glamour. Stewardesses were supposed to provide passengers with a sense of calm and security. Many in the early days were trained nurses, and in all eras they were responsible for ensuring passenger safety, especially in emergencies. When Boeing 707 jets came along, airlines went deep into debt to buy them and expand their routes. To boost their ticket sales, they began to explicitly market their stewardesses’ sex appeal.

In 1965 Continental led the way by running an advertisement showing, as Barry describes it, “a posterior view from the waist down of a slender, shapely stewardess bending slightly forward, wearing a snug, above-the-knee skirt and high heels.” The accompanying text read: “Our first run movies are so interesting we hope you’re not missing the other attractions aboard.” The same year Braniff, another major carrier, introduced an “air strip,” in which stewardesses shed layers of high-end garments, from hats and scarves down to more basic attire. In 1971 National, not to be outdone, ran a now-famous campaign featuring Cheryl Fioravente, a real-life flight attendant, with the slogan “Hi, I’m Cheryl—Fly Me.” To which Continental responded, “We Really Move Our Tails for You,” prompting National to change its slogan to “We’ll Fly You Like You’ve Never Been Flown Before.” And on and on. (Air France: “Have You Ever Done It the French Way?” Air Jamaica: “We Make You Feel Good All Over.”)

With such goings on, and Southwest Airlines requiring its flight attendants to slip into hot pants before performing safety checks on the cabin doors, something had to give. And along came second-wave feminism. Barry is a labor historian at heart, and her chapters on union organizing among flight attendants are among the book’s strongest. Flight attendants enjoyed a cachet that made them stand out from other “pink collar” workers, but despite that and their short careers, they proved avid organizers and formed unions, called strikes, negotiated hard, and used the law to claim their rights.

With the passage in the 1960s of statutes requiring equal pay and equal employment opportunities, flight attendants fought long and hard to overturn the carriers’ age, marriage, and physique requirements. By the mid-1970s they had won most of these battles. They also rejected their roles as sex and marketing objects and insisted that they be treated as safety professionals whose jobs were critical to American transportation.

However, their victories came just as deregulation thrust the airlines into a long period of reorganization and crisis. Today it is not gender inequality that most threatens female flight attendants, but industry instability.

As carriers seek Chapter 11 relief to shed pension and contract obligations and wrest pay concessions from their employees, flight attendants are still very much at the whim of the market. Who knows what Austin Powers might wake up to in another 20 years?