No, this isn’t a Radio City Rockettes kick line. It’s a Delta Air Lines Stewardess graduation photo, circa 1944, as seen in FLY WITH ME on PBS AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. Photo courtesy Delta Air Lines.

“Getting married meant I had to give up my job as a stewardess for Pan Am, a job I loved.”–Mary Higgins Clark.

The year was 1949.  She was 21 and ready and eager to quit her comfortable secretarial job and take a pay cut to travel the world as a stewardess.  That 21 year old would eventually blossom into best-selling author and “Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark.

I got to know Mary Higgins Clark fairly well over the years during my stints in Corporate Communications at her publisher, Simon & Schuster, and at The Christophers, as Director of the Christopher Awards.  You can read one of my interviews with her here in FrontRowCenter  http://www.judithtrojan.com/2020/02/21/   

I admit that I was flabbergasted when, during one of our earliest conversations, Mary admitted to me that, as a young woman, she was determined to become a stewardess.  During the late 1940s and ’50s, young working class women of her generation were on track to marry and have a family.  But before they settled down in postwar suburbia with a husband and kids, many were lured by the glamour of traveling the world as a stewardess.  Most never made the cut.

Once you got your foot in the door as a stewardess on a mid-century American airline, you not only had to maintain the good looks and weight that won you the job in the first place, but you also had to pay strict attention to your head to toe grooming and deportment.  Photo courtesy United Airlines.

Young, wannabe stewardesses had to meet archaic physical, psychological, race and age requirements and maintain strict lifestyle standards just to be accepted into an airline’s three week training program, land a job offer, perform the job and keep it without breaking the rules that got them hired in the first place.

“The requirements in those days would bring on a class-action bias suit now,” recalled Mary Higgins Clark in her autobiography, Kitchen Privileges (S&S, 2002).  “You had to be between 21 and 26 years of age, between five-two and five-seven in height, and your weight had to be commensurate with height.  You couldn’t wear glasses.  You had to be pretty. You had to have an outgoing personality. You had to have a college education or the kind of job experience that would have made you at ease in dealing with the public.  And you had to speak a foreign language.”

You also had to be single, white, and retire by age 32.  And you had to consent to insufferable mandatory weight, deportment and grooming reviews.

If this sounds a lot like the mindset that gave birth to Barbie in 1959, you need look no further than Sarah Colt and Helen Dobrowski’s fascinating new documentary, Fly With Me, for affirmation.  Fly With Me debuts on the PBS American Experience series tonight, Tuesday, February 20, 2024, 9:00 – 11:00 p.m. ET/8:00 C.  (Check local listings in your region.)  It will also stream simultaneously with broadcast (see below for details).

“Stewardesses were a revolution waiting to happen,” said Ms. founder Gloria Steinem.

As the commercial airline industry upgraded their spartan aircraft into safer, more comfortable family-friendly transports, male cabin crews were replaced by attractive female cabin attendants or stewardesses.  The young women were not only expected to prepare and serve meals but to treat passengers like would-be houseguests, calm their unease, administer first aid, birth their babies if need be, and expedite grueling emergency procedures in case the plane crash-landed on land or at sea.

Pretty in Barbie pink. Stewardesses, circa 1970, in sexy designer duds. Photo courtesy San Diego Air & Space Museum.

During the post WWII, Cold War and Vietnam War eras, stewardesses also often found themselves on or near the front lines, shuttling scared and scarred troops and other military personnel to and from dangerous regions.

Meanwhile, back at corporate headquarters, ambitious airline marketing mavens began commissioning such noted fashion designers as Jean Louis, Valentino, Emilio Pucci and Pierre Cardin to transform traditional, buttoned up stewardess uniforms into trendy, sexy gear.  Gone were the sensible heels, white gloves, seamed stockings and girdles, replaced by mini skirts and hot pants, low-cut necklines, vinyl knee high boots and cocky headgear. This marketing ploy certainly gave new meaning to the words “corporate downsizing” and “Fly Me.”

“You’re being marketed basically as a Barbie doll, and yet doing more and more complex work,” said professor and historian Phil Tiemeyer in Fly With Me. “There’s a fundamental incompatibility between these two things.”

Soon, the archaic job and lifestyle requirements that restricted prospective applicants and long term careerists galvanized stewardesses to take action.  Interviews with some of the remarkable flight attendants who fought the bumpy good fight for gender, race and class equality in their workplace against the airline industry’s demeaning, discriminatory employment practices are featured throughout Fly With Me.  That they played pivotal roles within nascent national feminist, labor and workplace equity organizations and commissions, standing side by side with such feminist icons as Gloria Steinem, is a real eye-opener.

“The women of Fly With Me broke barriers by becoming flight attendants in the first place, but what is so remarkable is that they were also in the vanguard of fighting for workplace equity,” said writer/director Sarah Colt.  “By exploring this history, we show the power of individuals to make change and how gender, race and class are critically intertwined.”

“Stewardesses were a revolution waiting to happen.”–Gloria Steinem. Photo circa 1965, courtesy United Airlines.

Fly With Me will be an important, evergreen addition to high school, college and university classes and library programs focusing on women’s and gender studies, U.S. labor history, and programs dealing with the history of airline travel.

Fly With Me debuts on the PBS American Experience series tonight, Tuesday, February 20, 2024, 9:00 – 11:00 p.m. ET/8:00 C.  (Check local listings in your region.)  Fly With Me will stream for free simultaneously with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/ and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO.  The film will be available for streaming with closed captioning in English and Spanish. Contact ShopPBS.org for DVD purchase. –Judith Trojan