Author: Kathleen Barry
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822339465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
'Femininity in Flight' considers flight attendants as cultural icons, looking at how attendants redeployed the 'glamourization' used to sell air travel to campaign for professional respect, higher wages, and women's rights.
Femininity in Flight
Author: Kathleen Barry
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822339465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
'Femininity in Flight' considers flight attendants as cultural icons, looking at how attendants redeployed the 'glamourization' used to sell air travel to campaign for professional respect, higher wages, and women's rights.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822339465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
'Femininity in Flight' considers flight attendants as cultural icons, looking at how attendants redeployed the 'glamourization' used to sell air travel to campaign for professional respect, higher wages, and women's rights.
Femininity in Flight
Author: Kathleen Barry
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
“In her new chic outfit, she looks like anything but a stewardess working. But work she does. Hard, too. And you hardly know it.” So read the text of a 1969 newspaper advertisement for Delta Airlines featuring a picture of a brightly smiling blond stewardess striding confidently down the aisle of an airplane cabin to deliver a meal. From the moment the first stewardesses took flight in 1930, flight attendants became glamorous icons of femininity. For decades, airlines hired only young, attractive, unmarried white women. They marketed passenger service aloft as an essentially feminine exercise in exuding charm, looking fabulous, and providing comfort. The actual work that flight attendants did—ensuring passenger safety, assuaging fears, serving food and drinks, all while conforming to airlines’ strict rules about appearance—was supposed to appear effortless; the better that stewardesses performed by airline standards, the more hidden were their skills and labor. Yet today flight attendants are acknowledged safety experts; they have their own unions. Gone are the no-marriage rules, the mandates to retire by thirty-two. In Femininity in Flight, Kathleen M. Barry tells the history of flight attendants, tracing the evolution of their glamorized image as ideal women and their activism as trade unionists and feminists. Barry argues that largely because their glamour obscured their labor, flight attendants unionized in the late 1940s and 1950s to demand recognition and respect as workers and self-styled professionals. In the 1960s and 1970s, flight attendants were one of the first groups to take advantage of new laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Their challenges to airlines’ restrictive employment policies and exploitive marketing practices (involving skimpy uniforms and provocative slogans such as “fly me”) made them high-profile critics of the cultural mystification and economic devaluing of “women’s work.” Barry combines attention to the political economy and technology of the airline industry with perceptive readings of popular culture, newspapers, industry publications, and first-person accounts. In so doing, she provides a potent mix of social and cultural history and a major contribution to the history of women’s work and working women’s activism.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
“In her new chic outfit, she looks like anything but a stewardess working. But work she does. Hard, too. And you hardly know it.” So read the text of a 1969 newspaper advertisement for Delta Airlines featuring a picture of a brightly smiling blond stewardess striding confidently down the aisle of an airplane cabin to deliver a meal. From the moment the first stewardesses took flight in 1930, flight attendants became glamorous icons of femininity. For decades, airlines hired only young, attractive, unmarried white women. They marketed passenger service aloft as an essentially feminine exercise in exuding charm, looking fabulous, and providing comfort. The actual work that flight attendants did—ensuring passenger safety, assuaging fears, serving food and drinks, all while conforming to airlines’ strict rules about appearance—was supposed to appear effortless; the better that stewardesses performed by airline standards, the more hidden were their skills and labor. Yet today flight attendants are acknowledged safety experts; they have their own unions. Gone are the no-marriage rules, the mandates to retire by thirty-two. In Femininity in Flight, Kathleen M. Barry tells the history of flight attendants, tracing the evolution of their glamorized image as ideal women and their activism as trade unionists and feminists. Barry argues that largely because their glamour obscured their labor, flight attendants unionized in the late 1940s and 1950s to demand recognition and respect as workers and self-styled professionals. In the 1960s and 1970s, flight attendants were one of the first groups to take advantage of new laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Their challenges to airlines’ restrictive employment policies and exploitive marketing practices (involving skimpy uniforms and provocative slogans such as “fly me”) made them high-profile critics of the cultural mystification and economic devaluing of “women’s work.” Barry combines attention to the political economy and technology of the airline industry with perceptive readings of popular culture, newspapers, industry publications, and first-person accounts. In so doing, she provides a potent mix of social and cultural history and a major contribution to the history of women’s work and working women’s activism.
Come Fly the World
Author: Julia Cooke
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0358251400
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
"A lively, unexpected portrait of the jet-age stewardesses serving on iconic Pan Am airways between 1966 and 1975"--
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0358251400
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
"A lively, unexpected portrait of the jet-age stewardesses serving on iconic Pan Am airways between 1966 and 1975"--
Airborne Dreams
Author: Christine R. Yano
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822348500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Book Description
An account of Pan Ams Nisei stewardess program (1955&–1972), through which the airline hired Japanese American (and later other Asian and Asian American) stewardesses, ostensibly for their Asian-language skills.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822348500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Book Description
An account of Pan Ams Nisei stewardess program (1955&–1972), through which the airline hired Japanese American (and later other Asian and Asian American) stewardesses, ostensibly for their Asian-language skills.
The Jet Sex
Author: Victoria Vantoch
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812244818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
Victoria Vantoch takes us on a fascinating journey into the golden era of air travel. The Jet Sex explores the much-mythologized stewardess within the context of the Cold War, globalization, and the emerging culture of glamour to reveal how beauty and sexuality were critical to national identity and international politics.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812244818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
Victoria Vantoch takes us on a fascinating journey into the golden era of air travel. The Jet Sex explores the much-mythologized stewardess within the context of the Cold War, globalization, and the emerging culture of glamour to reveal how beauty and sexuality were critical to national identity and international politics.
Working the Skies
Author: Drew Whitelegg
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814794734
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
Get ready for takeoff. The life of the flight attendant, a.k.a., stewardess, was supposedly once one of glamour, exotic travel and sexual freedom, as recently depicted in such films as Catch Me If You Can and View From the Top. The nostalgia for the beautiful, carefree and ever helpful stewardess perhaps reveals a yearning for simpler times, but nonetheless does not square with the difficult, demanding and sometimes dangerous job of today's flight attendants. Based on interviews with over sixty flight attendants, both female and male labor leaders, and and drawing upon his observations while flying across the country and overseas, Drew Whitelegg reveals a much more complicated profession, one that in many ways is the quintessential job of the modern age where life moves at record speeds and all that is solid seems up in the air. Containing lively portraits of flight attendants, both current and retired, this book is the first to show the intimate, illuminating, funny, and sometimes dangerous behind-the-scenes stories of daily life for the flight attendant. Going behind the curtain, Whitelegg ventures into first-class, coach, the cabin, and life on call for these men and women who spend week in and week out in foreign cities, sleeping in hotel rooms miles from home. Working the Skies also elucidates the contemporary work and labor issues that confront the modern worker: the demands of full-time work and parenthood; the downsizing of corporate America and the resulting labor lockouts; decreasing wages and hours worked; job insecurity; and the emotional toll of a high stress job. Given the events of 9/11, flight attendants now have an especially poignant set of stressful concerns to manage, both for their own safety as well as for those they serve, the passengers. Flight attendants, originally registered nurses charged with attending to passengers' medical needs, now find themselves wearing the hats of therapist, security guard and undercover agent. This last set of tasks pushing some, as Whitelegg shows, out of the business altogether.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814794734
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
Get ready for takeoff. The life of the flight attendant, a.k.a., stewardess, was supposedly once one of glamour, exotic travel and sexual freedom, as recently depicted in such films as Catch Me If You Can and View From the Top. The nostalgia for the beautiful, carefree and ever helpful stewardess perhaps reveals a yearning for simpler times, but nonetheless does not square with the difficult, demanding and sometimes dangerous job of today's flight attendants. Based on interviews with over sixty flight attendants, both female and male labor leaders, and and drawing upon his observations while flying across the country and overseas, Drew Whitelegg reveals a much more complicated profession, one that in many ways is the quintessential job of the modern age where life moves at record speeds and all that is solid seems up in the air. Containing lively portraits of flight attendants, both current and retired, this book is the first to show the intimate, illuminating, funny, and sometimes dangerous behind-the-scenes stories of daily life for the flight attendant. Going behind the curtain, Whitelegg ventures into first-class, coach, the cabin, and life on call for these men and women who spend week in and week out in foreign cities, sleeping in hotel rooms miles from home. Working the Skies also elucidates the contemporary work and labor issues that confront the modern worker: the demands of full-time work and parenthood; the downsizing of corporate America and the resulting labor lockouts; decreasing wages and hours worked; job insecurity; and the emotional toll of a high stress job. Given the events of 9/11, flight attendants now have an especially poignant set of stressful concerns to manage, both for their own safety as well as for those they serve, the passengers. Flight attendants, originally registered nurses charged with attending to passengers' medical needs, now find themselves wearing the hats of therapist, security guard and undercover agent. This last set of tasks pushing some, as Whitelegg shows, out of the business altogether.
Dreams of Flight
Author: Fran Martin
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478022221
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
In Dreams of Flight, Fran Martin explores how young Chinese women negotiate competing pressures on their identity while studying abroad. On one hand, unmarried middle-class women in the single-child generations are encouraged to develop themselves as professional human capital through international education, molding themselves into independent, cosmopolitan, career-oriented individuals. On the other, strong neotraditionalist state, social, and familial pressures of the post-Mao era push them back toward marriage and family by age thirty. Martin examines these women’s motivations for studying in Australia and traces their embodied and emotional experiences of urban life, social media worlds, work in low-skilled and professional jobs, romantic relationships, religion, Chinese patriotism, and changed self-understanding after study abroad. Martin illustrates how emerging forms of gender, class, and mobility fundamentally transform the basis of identity for a whole generation of Chinese women.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478022221
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
In Dreams of Flight, Fran Martin explores how young Chinese women negotiate competing pressures on their identity while studying abroad. On one hand, unmarried middle-class women in the single-child generations are encouraged to develop themselves as professional human capital through international education, molding themselves into independent, cosmopolitan, career-oriented individuals. On the other, strong neotraditionalist state, social, and familial pressures of the post-Mao era push them back toward marriage and family by age thirty. Martin examines these women’s motivations for studying in Australia and traces their embodied and emotional experiences of urban life, social media worlds, work in low-skilled and professional jobs, romantic relationships, religion, Chinese patriotism, and changed self-understanding after study abroad. Martin illustrates how emerging forms of gender, class, and mobility fundamentally transform the basis of identity for a whole generation of Chinese women.
Rethinking U.S. Labor History
Author: Donna T. Haverty-Stacke
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441145753
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441145753
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
Deregulating Desire
Author: Ryan Patrick Murphy
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 143990989X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
In 1975, National Airlines was shut down for 127 days when flight attendants went on strike to protest long hours and low pay. Activists at National and many other U.S. airlines sought to win political power and material resources for people who live beyond the boundary of the traditional family. In Deregulating Desire, Ryan Patrick Murphy, a former flight attendant himself, chronicles the efforts of single women, unmarried parents, lesbians and gay men, as well as same-sex couples to make the airline industry a crucible for social change in the decades after 1970. Murphy situates the flight attendant union movement in the history of debates about family and work. Each chapter offers an economic and a cultural analysis to show how the workplace has been the primary venue to enact feminist and LGBTQ politics. From the political economic consequences of activism to the dynamics that facilitated the rise of what Murphy calls the “family values economy” to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Deregulating Desire emphasizes the enduring importance of social justice for flight attendants in the twenty-first century.
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 143990989X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
In 1975, National Airlines was shut down for 127 days when flight attendants went on strike to protest long hours and low pay. Activists at National and many other U.S. airlines sought to win political power and material resources for people who live beyond the boundary of the traditional family. In Deregulating Desire, Ryan Patrick Murphy, a former flight attendant himself, chronicles the efforts of single women, unmarried parents, lesbians and gay men, as well as same-sex couples to make the airline industry a crucible for social change in the decades after 1970. Murphy situates the flight attendant union movement in the history of debates about family and work. Each chapter offers an economic and a cultural analysis to show how the workplace has been the primary venue to enact feminist and LGBTQ politics. From the political economic consequences of activism to the dynamics that facilitated the rise of what Murphy calls the “family values economy” to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Deregulating Desire emphasizes the enduring importance of social justice for flight attendants in the twenty-first century.
The Witch's Flight
Author: Kara Keeling
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822340256
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
DIVThrough an analysis of filmic representations of Black femininity, and the Black Femme in particular, this book highlights the ways "the cinematic" structures both racist and sexist portrayals, and their potential undoing./div
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822340256
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
DIVThrough an analysis of filmic representations of Black femininity, and the Black Femme in particular, this book highlights the ways "the cinematic" structures both racist and sexist portrayals, and their potential undoing./div