Mary Pat Laffey filed a class action discrimination suit against Northwest Airlines for violation of Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. Photograph: Bert Garai/Getty Imagesīut when the women’s liberation movement erupted in 1970 it empowered stewardesses too. TWA air hostesses attend a course in Kansas City in 1948. Nor did the unions, Congress or the courts, and it would be years until any semblance of real change could be wrenched out of the airlines. The agency, set up primarily to battle race discrimination, did not take the stewardesses seriously at first. More than 100 gender discrimination complaints were filed by stewardesses in the EEOC’s first year and a half. When the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opened, after the passage of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, stewardesses were among its first customers. Madison Avenue ad copy boasted: “When she brings you dinner, she’ll be dressed this way … After dinner, on those long flights, she’ll slip into something a little more comfortable … the Air Strip is brought to you by Braniff International, who believes that even an airline hostess should look like a girl.”
American Airlines required tartan miniskirts, matching vests and raccoon fur caps.īraniff introduced the “Air Strip”, where stewardesses would slowly shed their Pucci-designed uniforms over the course of the flight. Each plane had its own theme and costume: a gold minidress for France, a toga for Italy, a ruffled white blouse for Olde England. In 1968, TWA launched the “Foreign Accent” campaign. But in the latter half of the 60s, the sex-kitten look prevailed. At first, the style was proper: hats, gloves, knee-length skirt suits and heels. At least six stewardesses who were fired after they turned 32 killed themselves.Īnd then there were the “uniforms”. If a stewardess made the mistake of getting pregnant, she would have to quit, find a way to get an illegal abortion, or take sick leave to give birth in secret. Company doctors prescribed diet pills and many patients got hooked on Black Beauties. On the job, a scale was placed in the operations room, with stewardesses required to weigh in in front of their mostly male colleagues. At the charm farm, “girls” close to the weight limit were pulled out of class for random weigh-ins. If a stewardess stood 5ft 5 she could weigh 129lb or less, with three-pound overage once a month during menses.
Skills like mastering airplane safety came a distant second to physical appearance.Īs important as looking good was being svelte. Those who made the cut were shipped to the “charm farm”, a stewardess boarding school where candidates were taught how to comply with strict hair, makeup, nails and clothing regulations. A stewardess’s globetrotting life trumped the few other options available: secretary, nurse, teacher. In 1965, as many as a million women interviewed for 10,000 positions as “sky girls”.
0 kommentar(er)
