In 1966, when America was nonetheless within the throes of the Mad Males period, when males have been women and men have been their secretaries, Martha Griffiths, one in every of a handful of ladies in Congress, wrote to the senior vice-president of United Airways.
She requested: “What are you operating, Mr Mason, an airline or a whorehouse?”
Charles M Mason had declared that a stewardess who lingered on the job for greater than three years with out discovering a husband was “the unsuitable sort of lady”.
Mason’s remark described not simply the devalued standing of stewardesses within the Sixties however the actuality of most working ladies on the time. Mason’s “unsuitable sort of lady” (these “ladies” have been normally faculty graduates) was a lady who won't need marriage and youngsters to be her solely occupation, or may want to work for a residing.
As Nell McShane Wulfhart writes in her astonishing exposé of their lengthy wrestle for respect and equality, flight attendants have been pimped out as sexual objects whose position was to serve, allure and entice male clients. TWA, United, Delta and different airways argued that their backside line relied on hiring younger, lovely ladies and firing them in the event that they obtained married or pregnant, turned 32 or, God forbid, placed on some kilos. Airways have been within the enterprise of promoting intercourse together with tickets, a really worthwhile Playboy Membership within the skies.
This largely under-chronicled facet of latest ladies’s historical past is a precious reminder of how far ladies have come. These have been the times when ladies couldn’t get bank cards or signal leases with out their husband’s permission, sexual harassment and firing pregnant ladies was authorized, solely 3% of legal professionals and seven% of docs have been ladies, and ladies earned 40% lower than males for a similar jobs. Girls might have achieved the precise to vote in 1920 however they hadn’t made many extra strides in direction of equality till the second-wave feminist motion lit the fireplace within the Seventies.
The latest bombshell draft opinion by the supreme court docket justice Samuel Alito, which might reverse 49 years of a lady’s proper to regulate her physique and life, solely makes The Nice Stewardess Rise up a extra related and pressing learn. As American ladies stand on the precipice of revisiting their pre-1973 second-class citizenship, Wulfhart offers a stark reminder of how darkish these days actually have been.
In 1965, as many as 1,000,000 ladies interviewed for 10,000 positions as “sky ladies”. A stewardess’s globetrotting life trumped the few different choices obtainable: secretary, nurse, instructor. Those that made the minimize have been shipped to the “allure farm”, a stewardess boarding college the place candidates have been taught tips on how to adjust to strict hair, make-up, nails and clothes rules. False eyelashes and girdles, sure. Glasses, no. Abilities like mastering airplane security got here a distant second to bodily look.
As essential as wanting good was being svelte. If a stewardess stood 5ft 5 she might weigh 129lb or much less, with three-pound overage as soon as a month throughout menses. On the allure farm, “ladies” near the burden restrict have been pulled out of sophistication for random weigh-ins. On the job, a scale was positioned within the operations room, with stewardesses required to weigh in in entrance of their principally male colleagues. Firm docs prescribed weight loss supplements and lots of sufferers obtained hooked on Black Beauties. If a stewardess made the error of getting pregnant, she must give up, discover a method to get an unlawful abortion, or take sick depart to offer start in secret. At the very least six stewardesses who have been fired after they turned 32 killed themselves.
After which there have been the “uniforms”. At first, the fashion was correct: hats, gloves, knee-length skirt fits and heels. However within the latter half of the 60s, the sex-kitten look prevailed. In 1968, TWA launched the “Overseas Accent” marketing campaign. Every airplane had its personal theme and costume: a gold minidress for France, a toga for Italy, a ruffled white shirt for Olde England. American Airways required tartan miniskirts, matching vests and raccoon fur caps.
Braniff launched the “Air Strip”, the place stewardesses would slowly shed their Pucci-designed uniforms over the course of the flight. Madison Avenue advert copy boasted: “When she brings you dinner, she’ll be dressed this manner … After dinner, on these lengthy flights, she’ll slip into one thing a little bit extra comfy … the Air Strip is dropped at you by Braniff Worldwide, who believes that even an airline hostess ought to seem like a lady.”
When the Equal Employment Alternative Fee opened, after the passage of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, stewardesses have been amongst its first clients. Greater than 100 gender discrimination complaints have been filed by stewardesses within the EEOC’s first yr and a half. The company, arrange primarily to battle race discrimination, didn't take the stewardesses severely at first. Nor did the unions, Congress or the courts, and it could be years till any semblance of actual change may very well be wrenched out of the airways.
However when the ladies’s liberation motion erupted in 1970 it empowered stewardesses too. Mary Pat Laffey filed a category motion discrimination go well with in opposition to Northwest Airways for violation of Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. Northwest appealed time and again however Laffey lastly made historical past in 1984, when she received the most important financial judgment in Title VII historical past: $63m in again pay.
Extra importantly, the case compelled different giant firms to settle EEOC circumstances and put affirmative motion plans in place, paving the best way for a office revolution. Laffey’s profession lasted 42 years – sufficient time to witness the position of ladies within the office remodel from servants and sexpots to companions and colleagues.
Now we wait to see how far the supreme court docket will go to show again the clock.
The Nice Stewardess Rise up is printed within the US by Doubleday
Clara Bingham is the writer of Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Yr America Misplaced its Thoughts and Discovered its Soul
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