There are no more stewardesses.
The stewardesses on airlines morphed into flight attendants who are both male and female. In the 21st century, flight attendants are the generally congenial people who walk down the aisle of the cramped plane offering you a small cup of soda, an even smaller bag of peanuts, and tell you to stow your bags before takeoff.
The glamour of air travel has gradually disappeared, and most passengers who navigate the extensive security at the airport and then squeeze into the seat on the plane hardly consider it a glamorous experience.
There is nothing wrong with flight attendants, but they are a far cry from the glamour girls of the 1950s and 1960s who were called stewardesses. In Life magazine in 1957, there was a cover picture and featured article called “The Glamour Girls of the Sky.”
The article details the rigorous training and selection process a woman must endure in the hopes of being chosen by the airline to be a stewardess.
The stewardesses of the 1950s and 1960s were something very close to movie stars and were widely admired by men as sex symbols and were also envied by women of the era.
Since she was a small girl, Amelia Ryan Slater wanted to be a stewardess. As 1959 comes to a close in my new book San Francisco Nights, Amelia is no longer a stewardess and is a full-time partner to her husband Sam in the private eye business. Why? Simple—because she got married. The airlines wanted their “glamour girls” to be young and single.
I found an old job application for stewardesses from the 1950s. The requirements show how far we have come as a society and specifically how far women have come in their quest for equality in the workplace.
Here is a laundry list of the requirements for stewardesses. They are:
- Appearance: Height and weight proportionate
- Attractive: “Just below Hollywood” standards
- Gender: Female
- Marital Status: Single, not divorced, separated, or widowed
- Race: White
- Age: 21 to 26 years old
- Education: Registered nurse or two years of college
- Height: Between 5 feet, 2 inches and 5 feet, 6 inches
- Weight: 135 pounds maximum
I’m not sure how a woman is supposed to react to the qualification—”attractive, just below Hollywood standards.” Is it a compliment or an insult to be told that you are “just below Hollywood standards?” It’s astounding to think of a job application that would list the “qualifications” as “white, single, female,” with a range for height and, of course, a weight restriction.
The weight restriction was a sliding scale. For instance, the fictional character Amelia Ryan is 5 feet, 4 inches, which means she could only weigh 125 pounds. If a stewardess showed up for a flight above weight, she was grounded.
The airlines wanted pretty, young, single women to provide eye candy for their well-heeled passengers—mostly affluent businessmen. Once a woman was over 26 or was married, she was asked to resign.
That, of course, changed.
On February 11, 1958, Ruth Carol Taylor was hired by Mohawk Airlines and became the first African-American flight attendant in the United States. Ironically, despite her historic breaking of the racial restriction, Ruth’s career ended just six months later due to another discriminatory barrier: she married and was dismissed by the airline. Incidentally, only stewardesses had the age restriction and the marriage ban. No other airline employees, especially pilots, were under the same type of requirements.
In my novel, stewardess Amelia Ryan falls in love with Sam Slater. They want to get married, but Amelia also loves her job. She has to choose between marriage and continuing as a stewardess. It was a great dilemma for her.
The glamorous world of stewardesses was one of the only avenues open to women in the 1950s to “see the world” and have a career. But it came at a great price. Sam and Amelia are secretly married in Fog City Strangler. They keep their union a secret so she can continue to work for the airline.
In an earlier book in the mystery series—San Francisco Secrets—another challenge rears its head for Amelia: sexual harassment.
A womanizing pilot, Mark Silver, is essentially Amelia’s boss and aggressively pursues her with unwanted sexual advances. There was no such term as “sexual harassment” in the 1950s. As she tried to fight off Captain Silver, Amelia pondered the avenues she had to protect herself. There were basically none.
Amelia wonders if she goes to the airline to complain about Silver if it will cause her problems, not the pilot’s. She fears that when she complains about the “sexual harassment,” the airline will just say that “boys will be boys.” Stewardesses routinely had to evade grabby male passengers and the unwanted advances of pilots.
Sam is upset by the groping of Amelia and complains about her work environment, saying that if anyone is attracted to his girlfriend they can “take a sample.”
It would be several years before the stewardesses unionized and stood up to the airline. There was a series of lawsuits that knocked down the discriminatory barriers for women.