Early flight attendants faced sexism

Source: Chicago Tribune
Author: Dawn Klingensmith

Though widely regarded as glamorous, yesteryear's female flight attendants - known variously as stewardesses, sky girls and air hostesses - encountered indignities as often as they did turbulence.

They were required to remain single and meet strict appearance standards, including weight restrictions. Some wore paper costumes, which male passengers - in a boorish game of peekaboo - burned with cigarettes or splashed with water or liquor. And one airline gave male passengers little black books so they could jot down flight attendants' phone numbers.

But in the beginning of air travel, women had difficulty even gaining access to the profession.

"It's funny, because we think of flight attendant as a traditionally female occupation, but women actually had to fight for those jobs," says Toni Mullee, executive director of the International Women's Air & Space Museum in Cleveland.

In the earliest days of commercial flight, when plane rides were bumpy and cabins weren't pressurized, cabin attendants were all men. A registered nurse named Ellen Church suggested to Boeing Air Transport (now United Airlines) that nurses would be well-qualified to help airsick passengers.

"The person she initially contacted was all for it, but as the idea went up the chain of command, it got a firm `no,' " Mullee says.

Church persevered and persuaded the airline to hire eight stewardesses (including herself) - all registered nurses - in 1930 to ensure that passengers were safe and comfortable. The career of the female flight attendant was born.

In the 1940s, Uncle Sam needed nurses for the war effort, and airlines dropped the nursing requirement for stewardesses. Other hiring standards, however, were as strict as ever. In addition to the marriage, weight and appearance rules, the women generally were told they must retire by age 32.

Georgia Panter Nielsen, 69, worked for United Airlines for 42 years and was involved in a series of legal actions that ultimately made the skies friendlier for flight attendants. But at the start of her career in 1960, sexism was commonplace.

No marriage, no wrinkles

"I still faced all the discriminations of yesteryear - no marriage, no pregnancy, no wrinkles," says Nielsen, the international historian for the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA labor union, and a resident of San Jose, Calif.

In the mid-1960s, Nielsen once was required to take off her uniform jacket and hold up her arms while her breasts, waist and hips were measured. The degrading experience wasn't an isolated incident.

"Sometimes people patted your behind to make sure you were complying with the girdle regulation," says Nielsen, who retired in 2002.

Nielsen wore a stunning array of uniforms throughout her career.

"Some were outlandish, some short and sexy, some goofy, some smart and tailored and very elegant," she says.

When she started, she had to wear a hat and white gloves, which she hated, and carry a spare pair of pantyhose.

Fresh as a daisy

"We were expected to look as fresh as a daisy," Nielsen says. "We had to look like we didn't sweat, which was a lot of malarkey, because if you did your job correctly, you sweated a lot. You had to hustle, and those carts were heavy."

The earliest flight attendant uniforms were practical, with deep pockets for toting wrenches. Because natural textiles were needed for military use, fabric was harder to come by during World War II, so flight attendants' uniforms grew shorter and tighter.

"In the 1940s, the uniforms reflected the fashions on the ground," says Johanna Omelia, co-author of "Come Fly With Us! A Global History of the Airline Hostess." "But by the 1960s, stewardesses were setting the fashions."

Most airlines hired designers - Dior, Halston, Valentino, Pucci - to create fashion-forward uniforms.

In 1968, TWA introduced the aforementioned paper costumes - including an English "serving wench" outfit and a Roman toga - for its transcontinental flights.

In the 1960s and '70s, flight attendants unions used the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to initiate some of the most significant shifts in the profession. For starters, union contracts of the era began replacing the term "stewardess" with its unisex substitute, "flight attendant," reflecting the fact that greater numbers of men were entering the field.

Through negotiation and litigation, the no-marriage rule, no-pregnancy requirement and age restrictions were struck down, and body-weight policies were liberalized.

In the 1960s and '70s, when airlines were competing to lure male business travelers, they sought to capitalize on the attractiveness and attentiveness of their flight attendants. National Airlines launched its sexually suggestive "Fly Me" ad campaign, and Braniff International Airways unveiled its "Air Strip" marketing ploy, which featured flight attendants peeling off layers of clothing in the aisle.

"The '80s and '90s saw the shift back to professionalism in public perception, and after 9/11, I think people recognize that the flight attendant's primary role is safety, not serving lunch," Omelia says.

"I think the airlines downplayed our safety duties prior to 9/11 so people wouldn't focus on potential dangers," Nielsen says. "Heaven forbid that the public think flight attendants do more than serve you the best martini you ever had."

• 1922: Britain's Daimler Airway employs "cabin boys" to assist and reassure passengers.
• 1930: United Airlines hires Ellen Church, the first female flight attendant; novels of the decade, such as "Jane, Stewardess of the Air Lines" and "Dorothy Dixon Wins Her Wings," portray flight attendants as heroic figures, often rescuing passengers from wreckage.
• 1945: The Air Line Stewardesses Association is the first union for flight attendants.
• 1967: The book "Coffee, Tea or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses," bolsters the public's perception of flight attendants as sex objects.
• 1972: Yugoslavian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic survives a 33,330-foot fall after a bomb blows up onboard; her unprecedented plummet earns a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.
• 1973: The Association of Flight Attendants labor union is formed; one-fifth of flight attendants in the U.S. are men.
• 1979: Litigation results in the liberalization of airlines' weight policies for flight attendants.
• 1986: Sex discrimination case against United Airlines is settled for $37 million after a 20-year battle over the company's no-marriage rule.
• 1990: After a long battle led by flight attendants, a smoking ban goes into effect for almost all domestic flights.
• 1994: In a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, David Spade and Helen Hunt play rude flight attendants for an airline whose name contains an epithet; actors who have portrayed flight attendants more glamorously over the years include Halle Berry, Candice Bergen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kirsten Dunst and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
• 2001: A total of 25 flight attendants are killed on four domestic flights during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
• 2006: Sixty percent of Association of Flight Attendants members are married, 40 percent have children, 30 percent have four-year college degrees and 16 percent are men.