Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant

admin — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:45:00 +0000

In Working the Skies, Drew Whitelegg takes the interviews and study of a multitude of flight attendants and creates a readable, enjoyable tale of the perils and possibilities flight attendants face. The book is part psychology, part history and part cultural study with plenty of personal tales from retired and active flight attendants. The majority of flight attendants are women, which places the job in a unique historical and social context.

Commercial flight became popular and accessible during the 1950s and 1960s. Originally, flight attendants were registered nurses to allay any health and safety concerns by fliers. It also became a respectable way for women to “escape” the house and have jobs.

As flight became safer in the 1960s, with pressurized cabins and other improvements, airlines began using the attraction and sex appeal of their flight attendants. The exotic destinations and glamour of air travel was celebrated. The author makes the case that there is currently nostalgia for this glamorous ideal of the flight attendant’s world that is at odds with the demands and hazards of the job.

“Space-out” was an often-repeated phrase/concept used by the author. Flight attendants in the capacity of their job are able to create a separate world from their home world. This gives them a particular freedom of autonomy and self-expression not as available to other women, working or not. The excitement and freedom that the job allows flight attendants in the “space-out” is countered by the guilt that many flight attendants with children and those in a relationship. It’s a complex issue combining cultural and social norms of what a woman should be for her children and partner with the affects of the job on the psyche along with the enjoyment of being able to “get away.”

The airlines are painted as worried more about bottom-line then the lives and concerns of flight attendants: shorter layovers, less staff, a return to the "sexy" flight attendant imagery of the past that causes a “squeeze-in” where freedom becomes restricted. It’s worth noting that most upper management staff are male, compared to the female-dominated flight attendant staff.

Working the Skies is an easy read, and I really enjoyed it. After reading this book, on my next flight I will be paying more attention and respect to the flight attendants I see.

Written by: Kristin Conard, August 29th 2007

Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants

admin — Wed, 02 May 2007 18:57:00 +0000

By Kathleen M. Barry

Duke University Press

Young, white, educated, and pretty: these were the most essential job criteria early flight attendants (then called “stewardesses”) were required to meet. As a selective few catering to the affluent traveler, flight attendants in the early days of aviation held a seemingly glamorous job, one that was coveted in an era when a white women’s work often extended only to the front door of her home. In Femininity in Flight, Kathleen M. Barry examines the rise of flight attendants from their initial inception in aviation in the 1920s through second-wave feminism in the 1970s. Through a feminist lens, Barry discusses the unique position of women whose job entails essential knowledge of flight safety, but whose image has long been constructed, first as a “bride-in-waiting” and, later, as a sexual playmate.

Barry spends considerable time examining the progression of flight attendant unions throughout the decades, and her thoroughness is a challenge for non-historians, not as a matter of accessibility, but as one of length. However, laboring through the pages on the relationship between flight attendants and the labor movement pays-off. Barry successfully relates a sympathetic portrait of flight attendants while tactfully maintaining an objective analysis of their particular position within aviation. Her comprehensive portrait of flight attendants as safety professionals taken for granted by abusive passengers, exploited by air carriers with an eye on the bottom line and subjected to standards of appearance (including weight control, former age caps and marriage bans) makes the reader care about them and their long history for recognition and change within the profession, even when one picks up the book unenthusiastically (as I initially did).

The greatest shortfall is Barry’s decision to subsume the changing job expectations and job description flight attendants face after September 11th when security standards and tighter federal regulations have created new complexities for a work force that still remains predominately female, and was only granted federal safety certification (despite a nearly fifty year struggle) after 9/11. Despite this, Barry aptly exposes the conflicted status of flight attendants as both women of privilege and woman whose exploitation traditionally has been as high as the sky. While not a page-turner, Femininity in Flight is effective in handling the labor and feminist history of an individual group who are rarely given a second thought.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, May 2nd 2007