Working the skies: changing representations of gendered work in the airline industry, 1930 - 2011
Key words: flight attendant; airlines; employment; role representation; career representation; gendered work
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Working the skies: changing representations of gendered work in the airline industry, 1930 - 2011
Abstract
The influence of the media, whether print, celluloid or contemporary electronic, on life and career choices, particularly from a gender perspective is well documented. Indeed, the power of today’s e-media imagery has, arguably, a more ubiquitous influence on such decisions than was in the case for previous generations. However, both traditional print and more contemporary media influencers remain important and, therefore, gaining an understanding of their role in the representation of gendered work, both historically and in a modern context, is of considerable value. Working in the sky, whether as a pilot or member of the cabin crew, continues to hold a fascination and attraction for potential entrants that far exceeds the technical demands or financial rewards of the reality of such work. Perceived as ‘glamorous’ work since the early days of commercial flight in the
1930s, this tag has largely remained, despite major changes to the business and workplace environment in the intervening years. Commercial aviation is an area of work that has inspired a genre of influential romantic literature and numerous ‘real life’ recollections alongside serious academic analysis. This paper charts the representation of, in particular, female flight attendant work from its ‘golden era’ through to the present context where the influence of the low-cost airline model has radically impacted upon the working environment within the sector. The discussion focuses on the broad ‘genre’ of airline-related employment literature, drawing on romantic, comic and biographical accounts alongside sources that address this theme from academic/research perspectives, in order to ask whether contemporary representation is any more a true reflection of this work than that during previous generations. In undertaking this analysis, this paper draws upon the role and career representation literature, particularly with respect to embodied and gendered work.
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Introduction
The working lives (and, indeed, the lives beyond work) of flight attendants or cabin crew represent a source of popular and academic fascination which can be traced back to the early days of commercial flying in the 1920s and 1930s. There is the sense that what is frequently described as the ‘golden’ days of flight, running into the late 1960’s
(Whitelegg, 2007; Escolme-Schmidt, 2009; Waller, 2009), represented an era of perceived romance for which many, both inside and external to the aviation sector, continue to hanker. Postrel (2007) gives clear expression to this sentiment, a mood echoed by McCartney (2008).
Ah, the lost world of airline glamour. We seem to hear about it every time an airline introduces new uniforms, updates its airport lounges, or adds first-class amenities. Each new luxury or touch of style supposedly recalls the golden age of flying, before price competition, security checks, and slobs in sweatpants ruined everything. Yet despite the wardrobe tweaks and gourmet meals, the magic never returns. Airline glamour is an oxymoron,” says a bicoastal friend.
Postrel’s argument is that this was an era widely depicted as glamorous, both for those among the lucky elite to be the passengers in flight and for those who were able to rub shoulders with the rich and famous through the provision of service aboard the aircraft.
The reasons for the glamour were not so much to do with the fixtures and fittings of flight but because of the aspirational nature of air travel – the very remoteness from the everyday experience of ordinary people was at the root of perceptions of glamour as compared to today “mass transit” experience. Likewise, therefore, airline employment was widely coveted on the basis of the perceived glamour attached to work in this environment and the opportunities that arose from it.
During the ‘golden age’, many major North American and European airlines pandered to the prejudices of their customers and their owners by instituting recruitment practices that were, by most criteria, overtly discriminatory in social class, ethnicity and gender terms
(Binder, 1971; Whitelegg, 2005a) and highly demanding in emotional (Hochschild, 1983)
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and aesthetic (Nickson et al, 2003) and, arguably, by extension, sexualised labour terms
(Warhurst and Nickson, 2009). In terms of both ethnicity and gender, Mills (1995) charts what he sees as blatantly discriminatory practices in one major airline from the 1930s through to the era of deregulation and, in terms of the former, makes use of Said’s (1994,
2003) notion of orientalism in explaining imperialistic attitudes to power and work roles and how these were seen to match customer expectations.
A half century on from the ‘golden age’, the contemporary airline industry, for which the low-cost service model acts as a general proxy or even metaphor, is radically different from those ‘halcyon’ days. This is the consequence of a combination of factors, notably deregulation of the industry across many regions, increased competition within the sector, exponential growth in consumer demand and a more general democratisation of travel.
However, our interest here is also on the impact that wider changes within the global workplace have had on work in the skies. This is a response to the demands of what
Sennett (1998) calls “flexible capitalism”, most notably in the form of down-skilled and low status “McJobs” (Goos and Manning, 2003; Lindsay and McQuaid, 2004; Gamble,
2006). This is relevant, in the context of this discussion, because of the new business models that have emerged in the airline industry, led by low-cost carriers but now fairly ubiquitous across the sector, which have radically altered the work and employee relations environment. The reality of a changed workplace is reinforced by popular perceptions of “trolley dollies” and media reports of the working lives of some air attendants – for example, Penman’s (2008) account of low-cost airline Ryanair’s employees and their reported treatment. Today, industrial disharmony is commonplace within the airline workplace in many developed countries as a consequence of increasing competitive pressures on airlines, the perceived undervaluing of the work that cabin crew perform (Hunter, 2009) and wider employment relationship degradation within the industry (Shalla, 2002).
Yet, the flickering of glamour persists, as evidenced in consistently buoyant recruitment statistics within the sector and in media coverage (see, for example, the sensationalism
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that surrounded a celebrity’s in-flight encounter with a Qantas cabin attendant – The
Daily Mail, 2007; Smith 2007). Similarly, The Sydney Morning Herald (2011a) reports that “competition for flight attendant jobs is fierce in South Korea, where the role is seen as offering high pay and travel opportunities, and thousands of young women prepare for years before applying for vacancies”. Airline work as a passport to a glimpse of a perceived celebrity lifestyle, even via notoriety, is a theme we shall allude to later in this paper but is one which meshes well with a more general societal aspiration to achieve celebrity status as a career goal (Lumby, 2007; Cochrane, 2010). It is also worth noting the high level of news coverage accorded to published pictures of intimacy between
Cathay Pacific crew members (Hong Kong Herald, 2011). It is reasonable to speculate that, had this intimacy related to employees in other comparable areas of service work
(food service, land transport), there would have been little or no public interest in the matter. This prominence, therefore, can be taken to reflect continuing fascination with the work and lives of airline crew which is disproportionate to the status of the actual work and is also to be found, in ironic form, through television comedy representation in shows such as Come Fly with Me (2010) .
The challenges of understanding the changing representation of work in the skies
(Ashcroft, 2007) forms the basis of this paper which draws on the broad ‘genre’ of airline-related employment literature, placing romantic, comic and biographical accounts alongside sources that address this theme from academic/research perspectives. This needs to be seen in the wider context of the influencers which affect perceptions of employment and careers in general, notably growing understanding of the embodied nature of much interactive service work (Trethewey, 1999; McDowell et al, 2006;
Wolkowitz, 2002, 2006; McDowell, 2009). To describe such diverse sources in the collective as a ‘genre’ is contentious because there is little sense of common identity, beyond the context about which authors write, to bind them together. Therefore, it is probably valid to ascribe Borm’s (2004:13) argument that travel writing “is not a genre, but a collective term for a variety of texts both predominantly fictional and non-fictional whose main theme is travel”, a view that builds on von Martels (1994), to the field of airline-related employment literature. Indeed, inclusion of academic/ research sources
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takes this discussion a step further than Borm and, arguably, adds an important additional dimension to the discourse.
The representation to which we refer here is frequently tied closely to gender and ethnic role choice and, arguably, allocation within many societies (Flora, 1971; Franzwa, 1974;
Albertine, 1990; Peirce, 1997) and this changing context over time further informs discussion. In this paper, a constant, the glamorous representation of female flight attendants in romantic, comic and wider “recollections” in consumer print over the past
80 years, is discussed as an indicator of (or proxy for) wider public perceptions. Such representation is also set alongside a radically changed and, perhaps, starker reality located in the real world of the globalised labour market within which most flight attendants, particularly in developed countries, exist. As such, this discussion acknowledges Gamson et al’s (1992) contention that media represented imagery plays a direct role in the social construction of the reality that pertains to the phenomenon in question, in this case airline work. It is also acknowledged that wider gender representation has also not remained static over the timeframe of this analysis.
Methodologically, the development of the ideas which underpin this paper was exploratory and evolutionary in nature. The process faced a number of challenges in circumscribing boundaries, both in relation to the timeframe employed and in terms of the material that formed the basis for analysis. The process of identifying change between the ‘then and now’, the ‘then’ of the ‘golden age’ and the ‘now’ of today’s world, was always going to exhibit a degree of arbitrariness and a choice was made to focus on the impact of airline deregulation, from 1979 onwards in the United States and a decade later in Europe as a natural divider. This is the clearest external driver of change available and provides a distinction, perhaps not always crystal-clear, between a world of regulated, frequently state run airlines which changed only slowly and today’s dynamic and volatile industry structure. This choice was made while acknowledging that it does lay this study open to charges implicit in Du Gay’s (2004:147) critique of analyses of change in work and identity:
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One of the most striking things about much of contemporary theorizing about work and identity – whether critical or managerial in orientation - is the epochalist terms in which it is framed. By the term ‘epochalist’, we are referring to the use of periodizing schema in which the logic of dichotomization establishes the available terms in advance.
The starting point for this study was the author’s interest in low skills or interactive service work and the extent to which depictions by, for example, George Orwell in the early 1930s (Orwell, 2001) resonate with contemporary accounts of similar work by
Polly Toynbee (2003). To what extent do such accounts influence and remain rooted in popular perceptions of work areas and are career and life choices made on the basis of them? This interest led to exploration of early accounts of related work areas, notably through the romantic and career fiction that was set in the context of airline work, from the mid-1930s onwards. Attempts to validate these images of the working lives of air crew led to biographical accounts of such work by some of the pioneers in the field.
These two steps, in turn, informed a questioning of the extent to which representation of aircrew work has changed over time and engagement with contemporary sources of a similar genre as well as reference to a growing body of film and television portrayals of such work. Quantitatively, 37 fictional accounts dating from 1936 to 2009 were analysed in the preparation of this paper, together with 19 biographical or ‘expose’ sources.
Reference was also made to 7 movies and 3 television series. Not all of these sources have been cited in this paper but those used directly have been included in the references at the end of this paper. The final phase of the study involved seeking to make sense of the outcomes of this analysis by placing them within meaningful theoretical and explanatory contexts, notably structural (change within the workplace context of the airline industry), social (change within attitudes to and expectations of work and careers) and finally in terms of embodied gender representation in the workplace. Analysis was systematic but, ultimately, judgemental in approach, informed by recognition of the power relationships that underpin discourses that address employee relations, specifically in a gendered context (Foucault 1972).
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In summary, therefore, this paper charts the representation of female flight attendant work from its 'golden era' through to the present in order to examine the changing nature of embodied work, career choices and perceptions of 'glamorous’ work.
Representations of working lives
As Miller and Hayward (2006) rightly point out, many occupations remain substantially gender-segregated, notwithstanding equality legislation that has been in place for over 30 years. Likewise, role allocation on the basis of ethnicity (Adler and Adler, 2004) is widely reported in the literature. Such role stereotyping is clearly the product of diverse social factors but consumer print representation cannot be understated as a significant factor which reflects and, perhaps, stimulates change with respect to role allocations in the workplace and wider society. In a general sense, work and work roles have featured in literature since classical times, representing prevalent practice and social norms of the era in question. It is hardly surprising, then, that much of this literature has widely portrayed men in dominant and leadership roles and women in much more subservient, domestic and support positions. For example, Kortenhaus and Demarest (1993) highlight this clearly in relation to children’s picture books. Likewise, ethnic stereotyping, in terms of personal characteristics and role, is also reflective of the societal norms and prejudices which prevailed at the time of publication (for example, Shakespeare’s portrayal of
Shylock the Jew in the 16 th
century), a theme more widely reviewed in Barfoot’s (1997) collection.
Novels were also used specifically as a vehicle to influence career choice and aspirations.
Rosoff and Spencer (2010:4) discuss the genre of the career novel in Britain (also in evidence elsewhere) of which over 50 were published in the 1950s and 1960s, aimed at young girls and designed to encourage the development of career aspirations. Typically, these novels depicted situations which “gave their heroines a taste of independence within a conventional framework, but confirmed their ultimate domestic role through a successful romance. These novels provided instruction to their audience of teenage girls about how to engage their natural desires for performing their essential femininity in terms of the consumer goods of food and fashion”. One such novel,
Air Hostess Ann
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(Hawken, 1952, revised 1968) forms part of our subsequent discussion in this paper. The influence of the career novel genre, it can be argued (Speiden, 1961; Kerslake and
Liladhar, 1999, 2001) extends beyond the process of vocational choice by young women.
In another employment context, Kerslake and Liladhar (1999:489) note “one discursive strand contributing to the feminisation of library work was the career novel” and they further suggest (490) that
Their appearance ( the career novel ) at this time is significant since it coincides with the expansion of labour market opportunities for women in the 1950s. Thus, career novels can usefully be considered alongside other sources to explore both women’s access to the labour market and the contemporary feminisation of particular occupations .
It is, of course, a matter of some contention as to the extent to which romantic, comic or other representation of a particular phenomenon is adopted as a general perception of reality within a particular or wider community and certainly within the authoritative body of writing about a subject. Morgan and Pritchard (1998:5) argue that “image creators are themselves products of particular societies. . . . The images and representations which they create thus not only construct, but also reinforce ideas, values and meaning systems”. What is open to debate, however, are claims of any causal link between the broad ‘genre’ of airline-related employment literature addressed in this analysis and wider public perceptions of such work, given the parallel influences of wider social change at any particular time, particularly the growth in travel participation. In terms of the literature targeted at potential employees within the sector, during the ‘golden era’ of the 1950s and 1960s, there are well established arguments that reading in general was predominantly a middle- and upper-class occupation (Whitehead et al, 1977; Morrow,
1983) and that even within romanticised novels which extensively provide the basis for exploration of the lives of aircrew, a similar pattern is discernable (Light, 1984). What is unclear are actual sales and readership figures for the non-academic sources addressed in this paper, both from previous eras and of a contemporary nature and this forms a limiting caveat to this study.
In subsequent discussion here, we seek to contribute to an understanding of the literature on airline-related employment, specifically by cabin crew, by considering how the
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portrayal of female flight attendants in novels, biography and other formats has evolved, from the genesis of this literature in the 1930s through to the present day in relation to a period of major changes within the operating and workplace cultures of the airline industry.
Flying the early skies
The formative days in the employment of airline cabin crew, dating back to the early
1920s, are well documented (for example, Barry, 2007; Whitelegg, 2007). These and other historical analyses paint a picture of pioneering work within the sector, notably the recruitment of nurses as the first female flight attendants in the US in the early 1930’s.
This strategy was born, in part, from altruistic motives of care and concern for passengers new to air travel. However, as Birdie Bomar (Bomar and Bankson, 2002:124), Delta’s first female attendant, perceptively puts it, such care was tempered with clear business objectives.
You might want to think that the concept of nurses being flight attendants was an altruistic one and maybe there was an underlying thought in this direction, but it was also a very fine public relations vehicle..... It simply made good business sense to let passengers and their loved ones on the ground know that those flying were being well cared for. It helped ticket sales.
The notion of a feminised representation of glamour was also to the forefront in the image of work that was presented to potential recruits. Bomar (in Bomar and Bankson
(2002:126-127) recalls being told at the time of her recruitment that
’You’ll actually be a nurse in the air, except hopefully you won’t have many sick patients.
You’ll meet exciting people in all walks of life. You’ll literally walk on air. You’ll work in the air. And although your head may be in the clouds sometimes with all the excitement, your feet will be firmly on the ground’
Novels, from that period, appear to be fairly true to life in their representation of the work of flight attendants. Ruthie Wheeler’s (1936:18-19) heroine, Jane, embarks on her
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adventures across the skies of the United States in response to a recruitment letter which states
‘My dear Miss Hardy”, the letter began. “For some time Federated Airways has been considering a plan to improve its service to passengers and to provide even further for their welfare and comfort while they are guests aboard our transport planes. We have come to the conclusion that the addition of a stewardess to our flying crews is essential and at present we are contacting young women who might be interested in this work. Our first requirement is that the prospective stewardesses be a graduate nurse. Hence this letter is directed to you’.
Some subsequent accounts in novels also sought to focus on the dimension of care as opposed to glamour. Hawken’s (1952, revised 1968:8-9) heroine, Ann, in what is described as a “career novel”, is warned clearly against perceptions of glamour that may be attached to the job
’We need to guard against taking on girls who want to fly because they think this is a glamorous job. They imagine themselves in a smart uniform parading up and down the gangway doing nothing but ushering passengers to their seats, handing cups of coffee to ambassadors, and looking after actress’ poodles – and of course being photographed standing on the passenger steps holding a baby’
Responding to this stricture, Ann’s motives for wanting to fly remain altruistic and pure
(Hawken, 1952:10)
’Yes, I do really want to be a stewardess….. It’s such a wonderful way of travelling. It’s so quick and clean. And I want other people, nervous ones, and children and old people, to enjoy flying too. I shouldn’t mind holding their heads while they were being sick, or hunting for handbags or spectacles, or working in the galley’
The reality of female cabin work and its status relative to that of the elite male pilot fraternity is also clear in the novels from the ‘golden era’ of flight. Ashcroft (2007:9) refers to “the deliberate historical construction of airline pilots as elite, fatherly
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professionals” and the juxtaposition of the two roles is well illustrated in Beaty’s
(1956:46) novel
Most of the crew were staying at the St. George but the Captain waited in the car to be taken to La France, a larger and slightly more expensive hotel, which the Company felt assisted the maintenance of a captain’s dignity.
This clear distinction between the professional (and male) pilot and the rather more flighty (and female) attendant was no accident. Hopkins (1998) refers to deliberate steps taken by airlines to emphasise differential status within the airline workplace that included introducing a ship captain’s uniform and associated props, such as formal rank title and using loudspeakers for pilot–passenger communication by which means the pilot’s image was transformed into that of an elite officer. Foucauldian interpretation would frame this change in terms of how it altered the power relations between actors within air travel – pilots, cabin crew and, of course, passengers (Cheong and Miller,
2000). As Ashcroft (2007:18) puts it
Explicitly, then, pilots were crafted as consummate professionals and reassuring authoritative fathers – the embodiment of technical, physical, and emotional mastery.
However, Ann’s notion of stern reality is not where most readers of airline novels from this period wished to be. This is clear in the majority of novels by serial contributors to this theme. Examples of these are the sixteen Vicki novels authored in the United States by Helen Wells between 1947 and 1964 and those by her British counterpart, Judith Dale, who also published sixteen books about her heroine, Shirley Flight Air Hostess, between the mid 1950s and 1961. These stories focus on a combination of adventure, centring on
Vicki or Shirley, and exotic romance. For example, the back cover of Dale’s (1961)
Shirley Flight Air Hostess in Flying Jet exclaims
GIRLS! Take a ticket to adventure with me on Trans Continent Air Lines. My job is the most wonderful in the world and is full of excitement from take off to landing. Shirley
Flight has the world’s most exciting and adventurous job. Air hostess of Trans Continent
Air Lines, her career brings her in contact with famous people, wonderful friends and
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exciting adventures. From start to finish books about her exciting career are packed with excitement and adventure.
The sense of adventure, often ‘Bigglesesque’ in the clarity of good and evil, is evident throughout much of the genre of flight attendant novels from the ‘golden era’. Wheeler’s heroine, Jane, battles the elements across remote parts of the United States as commercial flight did not take the passengers and crew of her early career to the remote and foreign destinations of later characters. Both Shirley and Vicki are constantly faced with adventure in the form of bad weather, passengers who are not all that they seem or, most commonly, dangerous “locals” at their exotic destinations. Their role is to deal with whatever situation faces them, with either their colleagues or, more commonly, their brave (male) captain.
The more stereotypical and romantic desired outcome of a career in flight is very clearly represented when Beaty (1956:191) concludes her story with
And then, as he kissed her again, all the generally accepted theories of flight were for
Pamela shattered and disproved. For here, after all her flights, as she was standing quite still on the ground, had come the wonder and excitement of taking off on a new adventure, the soaring beauty of moving over a high heaven, and the peace and security of a safe landing after a storm – all the pure joy of flight packed into the small circle of
Roger Carson’s arms.
This romantic ideal, that working for the airline was, in a sense, a staging post on the inevitable life-journey towards marital bliss and home-making, was an important USP
(unique selling proposition) within the role that this form of novel was expected to play in attracting young women into the industry. It is also at the heart of the theme of
Camoletti’s (1960) stage farce, Boeing-Boeing , which features three air stewardesses as central romantic characters in a complication of the domestic ideal. The play was also produced in movie form in Hollywood in 1965 as Boeing (707) Boeing (707) and in
Bollywood in 1985 as Boeing Boeing . Evidence of the enduring fascination of the
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romantic and glamorous ideal of air travel is provided by the successful revival of the stage play in Singapore (2002), London (2007) and New York (2008).
The actual work of air crew (technical, emotional and aesthetic), too, was (and, to some extent, remains) a good training ground for domestic responsibilities of cleaning, catering and caring (Toynbee, 2003). The demands of such work conform to Vähämäki’s paradox
(Veijola and Jokinen, 2008) that modern service work requires us to be equally interested in and indifferent to everything, not committed to anything for too long and on hold, in anticipation for anything new which may arise. In a sense, therefore, airline work of the
‘golden era’ pre-empted, by some generations, the arrival of Jokinen and colleagues’ notion of a fourth shift within the knowledge economy. This posits that the borders between work and home have disappeared completely (Hochschild, 2001; Adkins and
Jokinen, 2008; Veijola and Jokinen, 2008). On this basis, work takes on the mundane attributes of everyday domestic routine and cannot be seen as glamorous unless, as was the case within middle-class societies of the 1950s, homemaking remained the ideal for many women (Veijola, 2010).
The well-bred “girl next door” image, with flight attendants all too happy to give up their life in the air for conventional roles as home-makers for the man of their dreams, as required by most airlines prior to the removal of the marriage bar in the 1960s and 1970s
(Goldin, 1988), is only rarely challenged in books of this nature. Christian’s (1959 republished 2003) story of the Twilight Girls undermines such preconceptions in her story of the rocky love affairs of “Mac”, a New-York based stewardess and is part of a wider genre of lesbian ‘pulp fiction’ was published in the 1950s and 60s. Such counter representations to the predominant image perpetuated of flight attendants are very much in the minority. Accounts of the work of male flight attendants in novels are also thin on the ground. Movies of the time, too, represent mixed imagery. Three Guys named Mike
(1951), for example, conforms to the popular romantic ideal in contrast with the horror theme of Julie (1956).
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The actual nature of the flight attendant’s work environment during the “golden era” was a combination of both dimensions represented in books of this genre. In terms of the reality which reinforces the popular image, Whitelegg (2005b:16) comments that “male passengers were lured into the air by unattached flight attendants, while young women were lured into the job by the possibility of meeting eligible men” Likewise, Barry
(2007:37) notes that
Glamour represented in this sense nonmonetary wages, the status and material benefits - from the interest and admiration of the media, to travel opportunities, to reputed desirability as wives - that stewardesses reaped as members of an elite .
Similarly, Baker and Jones (1967:23) recall their naive entry into employment in the following terms
We’re young and eager for a taste of glamour and travel, especially those of us living in small towns with bright dreams of running away to the big city.
This focus on youth, institutionalised by the marriage bar, was further underpinned by what Kerfoot and Korczynski (2005:390) represent as the common attitude of airlines in the United States up until the 1970s: “Use them until their smiles wear out and then get another bunch”. Veijola and Valtonen (2007) expand on the importance of the smile within service work, particularly airlines, in terms which explicate that this particular aspect within the work of cabin crew was, traditionally, seen as perishable within the industry.
It bears to note that smile, upon which the performance of femininity at work depends, is not the only visual image. Smile is an attribute of the entire convinced and convincing body that relates to another person: it is an embodied display and an act of amiable hospitality; it lingers in voice, gesture and bodily positions, not only on the lips.
Without a smile, airline work loses the basis of a glamour relationship and all that is embodied within it. The story lines to which we refer in this discussion depict cabin crew on its cover, invariably carrying the all important smile, as illustrated in one Plate 1.
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Plate 1: Smiling at work
Such sentiments contributed to the perpetuation of the institutionalised discrimination which characterised airline work from its early days (Barry; 2007:11-12)
The flight attendant occupation took permanent shape in the 1930s as ‘women’s work’, that is, work not only predominantly performed by women but also defined as embodying white, middle-class ideals of femininity .
This analysis is reinforced by Birdie Bomar’s comment (Bomar and Bankson, 2002:155) which is at variance with accounts in novels of the time but acknowledges that
Delta was good to us, too, but there was blatant discrimination against stewardesses in all the airlines at the time. You couldn’t be married. You couldn’t weigh over a hundred and ten. You couldn’t be over twenty-six years old and you couldn’t socialize with pilots.
Aspects of discrimination are confirmed by Taylor and Tyler (2000;86) who highlight the assumptions which underpin the embodied nature of the work undertaken by female flight attendants
Female flight attendants were seen as inherently capable of presenting themselves as
‘feminine’, as aesthetically pleasing, not only by their own employers, but also by customers and many flight attendants...... The role is defined (by airline management,
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cabin crew themselves and passengers) as ‘women’s work’; it is deemed to involve skills which women are seen to possess simply by virtue of being women.
This self-identification by flight attendants with respect to their femininity is important in terms of their role and representation during the ‘glamour era’. As Leidner (1991:155-
156) notes, workers’ “identities are not incidental to the work but are an integral part of it”.
Veijola and Valtonen (2007:18) highlight the relatively unchanging nature of gender relationships within the airline sector when they note that “All in all, the spatial and social arrangement, with men seated and women bending to serve, has not significantly wavered” over time in the service environment of the airline industry, suggesting that this reality, far from glamorous and, indeed, arguably a demeaning representation of role relationships, formed the basis of airline work in its early days and remains fundamentally the same today.
Over time, depictions of women in the context of airline work moved beyond the discrete and demure glamour of the early era of flight, building towards the increasingly liberal sexual ‘revolution’ of the 1960s. Hayes and Tiffney (2007:117) express this change as
The spirit of the times in the swinging ‘60s saw a revolution in the image of the stewardess. From dowdy nurse she metamorphosed into a sex goddess and marketing tool. Airlines shamelessly flaunted their charms as uniforms changed into micro-mini skirts and hot pants.
Likewise, Spiess and Waring (2005:196), in the context of the United States, note that
Through the 1950s and 1960s the flight attendant became a main subject of airline advertising, the spearhead of market expansion. The image they chose, among many possible ones, was that of a beautiful and smartly dressed southern white woman, the supposed epitome of gracious manners and warm personal service.
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This imagery, in turn, achieved a brashness in the overtly sexualised representation of flight attendants of the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as National Airlines “Fly Me” campaign or Braniff’s “airstrip,” in which a flight attendant disrobed bit by bit during a flight. Such language and actions retreated to some extent in increasingly post-civil rights, equality conscious societies (although returning in niche form in the 1990s with
Hooters Girls working the aisles of Hooters Air) and perpetuated in current imagery employed by Virgin Atlantic and V Australia. Such sexualised representation does not always go unchallenged by those most directly affected by this imagery. Alessio and
Jóhannsdóttir (2011) cite Bachmann’s (2005) report that Icelandair stewardesses initiated a series of court cases and law suits against the airline for inappropriate advertising.
The sexualised role representation of female cabin crew in marketing also appears to be borne out in the delivery of on-board services to passengers, with cabin crew trained to focus on the needs of their male customers. Westwood et al’s (2000) study notes that
Airline service was seen by the vast majority of the women as being essentially male orientated and staff attitudes in terms of discrimination and a general lack of sensitivity to women's needs were identified as particularly detrimental to their airline experience.
Tyler and Abbott (1998) conceptualise the female flight attendant role as tri-functional, comprising essentialisation , through which the flight attendant role includes skills which women are claimed to possess on the basis of their biological make-up; gendering which is manifest through ‘traditional’ female behaviours such as subservience; and sexualisation .
The lasting legacy of the female flight attendant as a sexualised marketing icon, one largely unquestioned in its home country after 35 years of use, is Singapore Girl. As
Chan (2000:459) explains
What we needed was a “unique selling proposition”. Happily, we found it. Or perhaps I should say we found her, because the Singapore Girl has become synonymous with
Singapore Airlines. SIA is an Asian airline, and Asia has a long tradition of gentle,
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courteous service. The Asian woman does not feel she is demeaning herself by fulfilling the role of the gracious, charming and helpful hostess.
However, Chan’s rose-coloured depiction is challenged, to some degree, by Heng
(1997:38) in her discussion of how Asian airlines tend to sell sexualised images of their female cabin crew. She reports that Singapore Law Courts were inundated with a "rash of sexual molestation cases where male air passengers of varied descriptions, races, and national origins had apparently found it impossible to resist fondling or otherwise sexually handling stewardesses on Singapore Airlines flights". Notwithstanding such setbacks, the value of Singapore Girl continues to be recognised by the airline within its cabin crew recruitment and also in terms of its consumer marketing (Sydney Morning
Herald, 2011b).
Singapore Girl, of course, challenges other facets of the stereotype of the female flight attendant in terms of her ethnicity, albeit based on a very selective representation of the country and region which excluded Singaporeans of white, Pacific island or Afro-
Caribbean appearance. In the United States, ethnic diversity in the cabin workplace emerged slowly and, arguably, with some reluctance (Whitelegg, 2005b) following equal rights legislation in the mid-1960s and was much slower to emerge with respect to major
European airlines.
It is important to recognise that the evolving representation of women and work in the airline industry took place in a highly regulated environment within which growth in consumer demand was stagnant or slow in many countries and flying remained, substantially, a prerogative of an elite minority. As Blyton et al (2001:448-449) note, regulation in the airline business
Facilitated a high level of job security for most employees … Job security was coupled with generally good terms and conditions of employment, backed by extensive collective bargaining machinery and secure trade union recognition throughout much of the industry.
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In a sense, it was a reality that was substantially uncontroversial in the period before deregulation because workplace conditions were hardly challenged, except where they took place in response to national legislation – equal opportunities relating to gender or ethnicity, for example (Whitelegg, 2005c).
Deregulation and the unmasking of glamour
Moves towards the deregulation of airline services, since the early 1980s in the United
States and some 10 years later in Europe and elsewhere, has created a workplace environment within which many traditional ‘glamorous’ facets of the job have been severely challenged or have disappeared. Deregulation spawned or emerged in parallel with unprecedented growth in consumer demand for air transport and tourism, in both the traditional markets of North America and Europe and in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere combined with the widespread introduction of new generations of larger and faster aircraft able to meet the growth in demand. New levels of competitive intensity emerged to replace the comfort of regulation, with the launching of new airlines, with new business and operating models for service delivery. Prominent among these have been the new generation of low cost of budget airlines (LCAs), led by Southwest Airlines but followed by now-familiar names such as Easyjet, Ryanair, Jetstar and Air Asia. At the same time, competition forced mergers and takeovers and drove a number of major airlines out of the skies, including iconic names such as Pan Am, TWA, Swissair and
Sabena.
Decline in service standards, in turn, created passenger unrest. The extreme consequences of a widespread sense of consumer frustration, helplessness and alienation is well represented in novel form by Miles (2009) in his novel Dear American Airlines . Boyd
(2001:440) sees the consequences of change as extending beyond service standards to impact on flight attendant wellbeing in a more general sense.
Airlines’ cost minimalisation and productivity maximisation strategies at both micro- and macro-levels have had a derogative effect on health and safety standards, where cabin
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crews are both subjected to deteriorating environmental working conditions, and also being exposed to ever more stressful and intensive working patterns.
O’Sullivan and Gunnigle (2009:253) note that “the business model of low-cost airlines, based on a cost leadership strategy, has been associated with comparatively poorer terms and conditions of employment” and this is borne out in evidence presented in reports by the International Transport Workers Federation (2002) and Blyton et al (2003), both of which highlight the reduction in unionisation and collective strength as a major contributor to the decline in the quality of the workplace. O’Sullivan and Gunnigle
(2009:253) stress that refusing trade union recognition in Ryanair has been a deliberate strategy in that new model carrier and they further outline consequences of this in terms of a decline in working conditions that include “greater work intensification, less job security, fewer breaks, lower earnings, pay freezes, introduction of two-tier pay systems, and increased atypical employment contracts”, all elements that do little to maintain glamour in the workplace. Trade unions were clearly well aware of the impact of such realities and the dangers that are associated with them. The International Transport
Workers Federation (1995:7) warned that “cabin crews must be protected from undue commercial considerations which may impinge on any aspect of safety …. areas of potential conflict should be monitored by the operators and regulatory authorities”.
Hunter (2009) links these two consequences of change in developing a strongly argued thesis that the modern phenomenon of air rage is, in significant part, a direct response by customers to the deterioration of service standards by airlines but also in direct human terms by cabin crew within the airline sector. This in turn, she argues, emanates from an eroding of the traditional status of flight attendants and their ability to meet customer needs in the manner for which they were trained. In other words, flight attendants are unable to or choose not to engage emotionally with their customers in a positive manner, in extreme cases prompting aggressive customer responses. Indeed, as Rhoden et al
(2008) point out, the inadequacy of modern crew training, means that they are woefully under-prepared for their emotional labour role. Foss (2002:1) articulates the frustration of this new reality.
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I am a flight attendant and the world is my oyster. And what an oyster it is! Oversold flights, weather delays, air traffic control delays, center seats, crappy food, air rage – it’s so glamorous! Kind of like a Greyhound bus in the sky.
This cynical reality, juxtaposed by reference to unreal perceptions of glamour, is increasingly evident in representations of airline work in print. Calder (2002:193) puts this in terms of
Cabin crew come a lot cheaper than pilots, not least because their training takes a month rather than several years - and because there is a seemingly never-ending supply of people who still believe that flying is glamorous and exciting. They are prepared to work for £12,000 per year (and that’s after their pay has been topped up by an extra fee for every sector flown).
This analysis is confirmed by Hunter and Turnbull (2006:333) when they note that “the
‘low cost service’ of low cost airlines is ‘matched by’, or more accurately is ‘constructed upon’, low cost employment policies”. Industrial relations through the years of change since deregulation have been fraught at times, with high profile disputes between employers and cabin crew occurring in major airlines such as Alitalia, British Airways,
Cathay Pacific and Lufthansa. Perceptions that LCAs have significantly lower union representation is not wholly borne out in research by Hunter (2006) who notes a convergence in the industrial relations environment between the full-service and LCA sectors, reflecting a parallel merging of their business models for short-haul flights.
Less developed country perspectives on the reality of airline work are not, perhaps, wholly in tune with the sense of disillusionment which we find in much reporting and analysis about the contemporary industry in the United States and Europe. As a
Malaysian, Lee (2005:13) perceptively notes
Being a stewardess means many different things to different people. For a jaded stewardess of the First World, flying in a plane is as common as taking a train; however, there is a new group for whom being a stewardess means the world to them.
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In support of this, Lee (2005:13) cites a Tibetan colleague, Zhonga, who enthuses
‘Being a stewardess is my dream. Now people throughout the world will see me before they see Tibetans. I will proudly show them what a Tibetan woman is like’
East and South-East Asian airlines have also retained overtly sexualised imagery of their female cabin crew as a key feature within their marketing, most following in the footsteps of Singapore Airlines in doing do. This focus on a sexualised body “ideal” can, of course, create problems within the workforce, as exemplified in the case of Turkish Airlines’ grounding of “fat” flight attendants of both genders (Haq, 2010).
We have already noted that the status of airline work remains high in some part of the world and is evidenced in the continuing high levels of demand for positions. This continued interest in working for Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong, across the full range of areas but particularly as cabin crew, has stimulated an extensive literature in its own right, written by members of staff and sponsored but not published by the airline. These books romanticise the benefits of working for the airline and focus on the attraction of flying (examples include Nam, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010; Chan, 2006; anon 2006,
2007) and the beauty and romance of selected destinations (examples include Chan,
2005, 2007, 2009).
Thus, the attractiveness of careers in the airline sector remains strong in some part of the world but the advent of low cost airline models in regions such as south-east Asia may threaten this situation. For example, Air Asia, according to Poon and Waring (2010), is rapidly adopting the hard HRM models which characterise the work environment at
Ryanair and the workplace environment within the company is rapidly changing and, arguably, deteriorating at the same time.
The volume of literature about the lives of flight attendants in novels aimed at teenagers and the romance markets, which reached its peak in the early 1960s, has undoubtedly decreased, perhaps indicating a lessening interest in this area as a result of growing exposure, through travel, to the reality of the airline workplace. Nevertheless, Mackle’s
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(2007:12) confessions of a contemporary “air hostess” depict work in terms perhaps somewhat hardened but fundamentally similar to that of past generations.
Where else could I find a job where I spend most of my time looking into a mirror and reapplying my lipstick? Who would pay me to swim up and down a glorious pool in Santa
Monica as part of my job? Or to hang out in London hotels during rugby internationals?
Flight attendant work is also represented in terms of its wider, rather more traditional benefits as when Lokko’s (2005) tale depicts Francesca, the glamorous Alitalia stewardess who is seeking a wealthy man as her passport out of her working life, an aspiration not so different to that found in early novels and a clear representation of the attraction of celebrity to which we earlier alluded. Mackle (2007), too, represents romance as a key benefit of work with the airline.
Both Nilon’s (2009) The Flight Attendant: A Stewardess's Erotic Secrets and Hester’s.
(2002) In-flight Entertainment. Tales of Sex, Rage and Queasiness at 30,000 feet substantially take the romantic element out of the narrative. Nilon brings us Valerie, the flight attendant with her erotic experiences at work, a dimension totally absent in earlier fictional representation. In a similar manner, film representation through a range of contributions that range from the Naughty Stewardesses series (from 1975) to Flight
Attendants XXX Comedy (2009) have contributed to the de-romancing of work in this area.
Simonetti’s (2006) Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant. The Queen of Sky Blog , is a contemporary take on a theme that figured in the early books of this genre, representing a blog-based diary, a catalogue of social whirls, romances and mishaps which are not so different from the real-life experiences that some readers may envy. Qantas flight attendant, Lisa Robertson, was at the centre of a storm over alleged events with actor
Ralph Fiennes on a long-haul flight (Smith, 2007), admitting that, according to The Daily
Mail (2007) “she was a big fan of the British actor and found herself luring him to the cubicle.” Lacey (1999) reinforces the merging of contemporary fact and celebrity dreams.
24

But play your cards right and the pickings can be rich: Dimitra Papandreou, Sara
Netanyahu and Annita Keating managed to bag prime ministers of Greece, Israel and
Australia respectively. A couple of Sasha's friends have met their husbands in-flight.
"They are a captive audience when they're on the plane," she says with a giggle.
"Naturally, we do prefer serving the ones who are quite hunky and gorgeous, so they probably get more spoiled than the fat and horrible passengers."
Reflections
This paper seeks to contribute to an extant literature which explores consumer print representations of work and workplace roles, in this case by reflecting on the substantially gendered and embodied representations of airline cabin crew and how these have changed over the past 80 years. The discussion has sought to sample the representation of flight attendants and their work from two distinct periods in the development of commercial aviation, separated by the critical watershed of deregulation, perhaps an arbitrary but convenient dividing line. It has drawn on fictional, biographical and academic sources in undertaking this comparative analysis. The first three of these sources, in particular, impact upon public perceptions of work in this sector and may contribute, ultimately to the social status of such work and to the recruitment of future generations of flight attendants.
The novel, in particular, is of interest in this context as it has, in the past, been employed specifically as a vehicle to engender interest in work in the airline sector, as Hawken’s
(1968) career novel, first published in 1952, illustrates. There is little doubt that contemporary novels depicting the working and non-working lives of female flight attendants, is significantly different in tone and substance from that of the ‘golden era’ of flight – this is hardly surprising, given the major social, cultural and, above all, literary transformation that has occurred over the past sixty years. Consumer print novels (and biography), of course, do not carry the same impact as it might have done in the past as alternative media gain increased influence and attract larger audiences – television series such as Air Babylon , based on allegedly true accounts, and the documentary series Airline
25

(one of the few contemporary sources to be based in the LCA sector), however, represent examples from a limited range of choices in this area.
This paper pulls together a number of complementary but, in other respects, somewhat diverse theoretical areas of discourse and this, in itself, presents a challenge in making sense of change and/or the lack of it over an 80 year period. There are also implications for our interpretation of the outcomes of this discussion from the point of view of stakeholders such as airlines, their trade unions and consumers. For example, this discussion can have value in informing discussion of the link between media representations and sexual exploitation of female cabin crew in airline advertising.
Considering the changes that have occurred over the past 80 years and returning to how cabin crew work is represented in popular reading, style and reading habits apart, what is striking in engaging with the two periods is the evident similarities in the stories that they tell. Romance and adventure remains the main focus, together with wry humour.
Glamour is rarely absent from the narrative with few flight attendants in contemporary books encountering the rather more mundane reality which high volume customer service, poor pay, time pressure and air rage bring to modern air travel. The world of the
LCA is strikingly absent from such fiction. As a consequence, there may be a danger that such representation will influence the readership of such books into believing that the world really has not changed since the days of Jane, Vicki and Shirley. As frequent travellers, however, it is unlikely that we will all be so readily duped.
26

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