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Book Details Arc of Flight Attendants
Dallas Morning News
July 1, 2007
From Wire Reports
Paul Westerberg may have struck the nadir of disrespect for flight attendants when he described one as "struttin' up the aisle, big deal, you get to fly. You ain't nothin' but a waitress in the sky.''
The 1960s image of a 'stewardess' was that of a carefree young woman.
Merciless stuff from The Replacements' 1985 album Tim, but the band's irreverent frontman touched on something in "Waitress in the Sky" – the prevailing feeling that flight attendants harbor an undeserved sense of high station. And that they're all too aware, soaring tens of thousands of feet above the earthbound masses, of the exotic nature of their lives.
But the mythological "stews" – young women living a life of sex, drugs and never-ending voyage – is a far cry from the well-documented realities presented in Drew Whitelegg's new book, Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant, published by New York University Press.
Using a series of interviews and focus groups with flight attendants of all ages, Mr. Whitelegg charts the arc of a profession barely seven decades old.
When commercial aviation took off in the 1930s, professional nurses were hired, in no small part because "being a stewardess was more arduous than glamorous, as women worked in a cold, unpressurized cabin ... assisting passengers in various stages of vomiting."
By the 1940s and '50s, their "look" and "type" became central to an airline's brand image. Naturally, the companies seized control. "Hiring regulations continued to stress figure, age, marital status, beauty, personality, perfect physical condition ... and willingness to retire at thirty or thirty-two."
Unionization, regulation and women's liberation in ensuing decades did much to change the picture. Today's flight attendants come in all ages and stages of life; many are as likely as not to be wives and mothers (or husbands and fathers, in some cases).
What's changed little, Mr. Whitelegg writes, is the demanding, disorienting and disrupting nature of the job itself.
Flight attendants' schedules are ruled by a Byzantine seniority system; they are expected to play the roles of host, safety attendant, authority figure, security guard – and yes, waiter or waitress – and do it all, without complaint, in a perpetual state of jet lag.
All that said, Mr. Whitelegg points to a movement to return sexiness to the cabin, a nostalgia trend that airlines are using to distinguish themselves. He points to Song Airlines' "Song Talents," a collection of "the bubbliest flight attendants it could find among Delta's existing pool" and the "nostalgic, retro and 'mod' sixties tones" of JetBlue's flight attendant garb.
Josh L. Dickey,
The Associated Press
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