The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched a Workplace Revolution at 30,000 Feet
by Nell McShane Wulfhart (Doubleday, $30)
Airline stewardesses of the early 1960s were, by necessity, “accustomed to accepting blatantly unreasonable demands,” said Eleanor Clift in The Washington Post. Airlines hired only women, who were required to be thin and single, and faced a mandatory retirement age of 32. Weight and girdle checks were common, and pregnancy was grounds for termination. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, “the airlines’ model of a cadre of young, beautiful women catering to mostly male business travelers resisted meaningful change until stewardesses took matters into their own hands.” It’s that story that travel writer Nell McShane Wulfhart tells in her new book, and she brings “a treasure trove” of vivid anecdotes to the task.
Once the stewardesses start fighting back, the story becomes “exhilarating,” said Barbara Spindel in The Wall Street Journal. Wulfhart focuses on two stewardesses who became leaders in their union. One of them, Patt Gibbs, was 19 in 1962 when she entered American Airline’s six-week stewardess college, accepting instruction on standardizing her makeup and hairstyle. But she quickly saw the need to organize, and came to realize that she and her peers were fighting male decision makers both at the airline and at their own Transport Workers Union. Progress was hard-won. In 1971, stewardesses picketed when an airline published an ad featuring a stewardess’ photo and the line “I’m Cheryl. Fly Me.” They even had to fight having to wear 3-inch heels.
As inspiring as the story is, “reading the details feels like pouring salt in a wound that has yet to heal,” said Leslie Bennetts in The New York Times. Yes, stewardesses won victories against sexual discrimination that improved all workplaces. But these heroes were “impeded at every turn by the vicious misogyny as well as the careless inhumanity of all the sexist men who opposed their goals.” As recent events have shown, a “patriarchal hierarchy” that’s eager to police women’s bodies remains active, and it’s “just as savagely implacable” as it was in 1962.