Come Fly with Us: a Global History of the Airline Hostess

Journal of Transport History, The, Mar 2004 by Whitelegg, Drew

Johanna Omelia and Michael Waldock, Come Fly with Us: a Global History of the Airline Hostess, Collectors' Press, Portland OR (2003), 160 pp., US$24.95.

Essentially a pictorial account of the changing image of airline cabin crew - known variously as airline hostesses, stewardesses or flight attendants - this book sits well alongside Keith Lovegrove's study of carrier identities, Airline. Media representations of transport in popular culture are an important source for historians, e.g. the changing design of London Underground maps or tourist brochures, and this collection represents decent value for aviation specialists and cultural historians alike.

The set of illustrations is interspersed by textual commentary, which guides the book through a logical chronology. This starts with the original flight attendant nurses of United Airlines in the 1930s, moves through the 'sex object' era of the 1960s and then into deregulation and post-deregulation, in which cabin crews' status has been downgraded to that of 'flying waitress'.

Much of the text is taken from official company publications and industry pamphlets. Though analysis is kept to a minimum, some of the information is absorbing. In the early days, before pressurised cabins, one of the jobs of cabin crew was to prevent passengers from opening the exit door when they were going to the toilet. 'Warn passengers against throwing lighted smoking butts or other objects out of the windows, particularly over populated areas', instructs a 1930 stewardess manual. There is also a welcome emphasis on how aviation liberated women: for all its sexist imagery, few careers have offered women as much autonomy and geographical freedom as that of flight attendant.

Changes in aircraft design serve as a backdrop to the changing role of cabin crew. On the early propeller aircraft flights they were employed primarily as a reassurance to passengers. Their image was one of maternal nurse. It is important to remember that competition on price was generally absent from the 1930s until the 1978 American deregulation Act and airlines therefore had to find other, innovative ways of differentiating themselves from their competitors. Omelia and Waldock do a good job here and provide an assortment of depictions of the increasingly risque clothes designs which stewardesses were obliged to wear. Braniff Airlines notoriously featured the 'air strip', in which a flight attendant disrobed, piece by piece, throughout the flight. PSA conjured an image of 'pure, sober and available', Southwest Airlines flew with 'Love Birds' and National Airlines, infamously, carried the slogan which enraged feminists: 'I'm Cheryl, fly me'. By the end of the 1970s the women's movement in the United States had ended such overt sexism, though it clearly continued in other parts of the world. In the post-deregulation era, and with the growth of low-cost carriers, the image of cabin crew - in America at least - became a mixture of fun and functional, or minimalist, as in the case of Jet Blue.

Many of the advertisements shown are well known, but even with the benefit of hindsight some still verge on the outrageous. The most surreal portrays a Sophia Loren look-alike curled up alluringly on a chair, whom American Airlines invites passengers to Think of as your mother'. Also featured are TWA's 'foreign accent' flights, in which flight attendants dressed up in variously themed costumes: Italian (see toga), French (see gold mini), Olde English (see wench) . . . Manhattan Penthouse (see hostess pajamas).

The illustrations, however, belie the inaccuracy of the book's title. It is not really a history of the airline hostess; it is a history of the image of the air hostess, which is something different. The book says more about how companies used women to sell their product than about the women's jobs or changing twentieth-century attitudes towards women in the public sphere. There are no pictures of exhausted flight attendants in faceless hotel rooms in nameless cities. There are no illustrations of them sitting for days by a telephone in the hope of being needed to fly. Moreover the importance of the illustrations is undermined by footnotes with bizarre highlighting: 'This Ansett hostess uniform featured hot pants worn under a split skirt' or 'Before the friendly skies got so crowded . . .'. There is no logic in this highlighting. Worse, none of the illustrations is dated specifically, which limits the book's historical usefulness (as does the apparent touching up of photographs and occasional use of models). There is also evidence of poor proof reading.

As recently suggested by an article in the Chicago Tribune, there appears to be a growth of nostalgia for the 'glamour years' of flying, especially in the present climate of cutbacks and fear. The republication of Coffee, Tea or Me? (1967) - the ghost-written 'memoirs' of 'two uninhibited stewardesses' - confirms this trend. Come Fly with Us can also be seen in this light, as it remains, at best, a coffee-table history with very little critique of the development of the profession. Indeed, except for Georgia Nielson's From Sky Girl to Flight Attendant (1982) we have yet to see a comprehensive history of the flight attendant career. For all the glossy pictures that will appeal to enthusiasts, Come Fly with Us does not fill that gap.