Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics of Appearance

Transcription

International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.
Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics of Appearance
Author(s): Eileen Boris
Source: International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 69, Working-Class Subjectivities
and Sexualities (Spring, 2006), pp. 123-142
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.
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Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics of
Appearance
Eileen Boris
University
of California,
Santa
Barbara
Abstract
on
dress
Desirable
symbolic
pleasure
where
issues
of
intertwined:
competition
second,
to
a prototypical
sexual
allure
selling
of wage-earning
voices
mediated,
uniforms,
contains
strictures, and state
appearance,
sexuality, employer
self-fashioning,
the shop floors of the Second World War
and the flight cabins of
the first,male dominated manufacturing
in which women
labored "for
postwar airlines:
the duration";
the
led
or mini-skirted
it expresses
is not always
clear.
a proxy for other forms of contestation
or just be a conveyer of
work
humane.
This essay rethinks two cases
just a little more
may be
that makes
Appearance
policy
the job, whether
pants, sweaters,
but whose
sexual
subjectivity
meaning,
female
along
in both
women
in which
fierce
industry
comfort
However
and
safety.
new
the 1940s and 1960s announced
service
with
But while management
beauty, and sexual expressiveness.
in the shipyards and other wartime workplaces,
bodies
state
In both examples,
the body of the flight attendant.
promoted
sources available
as well as actual public policies?complicates
our
of womanhood,
expectations
to suppress
attempted
by the 1960s
airlines
mediation?through
attempt to unravel
women's
in
and constraint
pleasure
or not dress requirements
the job. Whether
of efficiency or a check
guarantee
against
or
new possibilities
for
compensation,
opened
on
could demand
Employers
predetermined.
dress was desirable
varied with the beholder.
dressing,
grooming,
disciplined
accidents
and
sexual
bodies,
employee
and
the expense
presence
served as a
of worker
or gendered
identities was hardly
could wear
slacks, women
them, but what
sexual
In oral interviews some thirty-fiveyears after the Second World War, former
Rosie the Riveters recalled their experiences of wearing slacks for the first
time. "I felt kind of funny because I didn't really have the figure for slacks.
I was
pretty
one
buxom,"
white
welder
confessed.
"Of
course,
we
got
quite
used to it, and later I wore them all the time; even on my day off."Another
white woman explained, "Pants were just becoming fashion forwomen and I
felt like, gee whiz, itmade me look like Iwas different. Iwas working someplace
and nobody else was and people would look atme." A Mexican American also
admitted, "I feltkind of funnywearing pants. Then at the same time, I said, 'Oh,
"
what the heck.' Though donning overalls and jeans, clothes associated with
rough
masculinity,
seemed
initially
"very
odd,"
even
embarrassing,
some
war
workers only reluctantly returned to dresses after leaving the factory for
office,
retail,
"your
hair
worker
at
or other
tied
up"
the Boston
spaces
and
of women's
wearing
Navy
Yard
"a
labor.1
welder's
admitted,
For
slacks?along
as
helmet"?brought,
"liberation."
Pants,
with hegemonic masculinity, could signifypower and freedom.2
International Labor and Working-Class
History
No. 69, Spring 2006, pp. 123-142
2006 International Labor and Working-Class
?
History,
with
Inc.
having
a white
associated
ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006
124
in industrial
the 1930s, pants on women were unacceptable
workplaces "because of a possible production hazard in distracting male
employees," arbitration relations experts Frank Elkouri and Edna Asper
Elkouri found, but "in the 1940s many plants required women to wear slacks
to avoid danger involved inworking around industrialmachinery."3 Whether
or not dress requirements disciplined employee bodies, served to guarantee
During
or check
efficiency
accidents
against
and
of worker
the expense
or opened new possibilities for sexual or gendered
determined.
could
Employers
demand
women
slacks,
compensation,
identities was hardly pre
wear
could
but
them,
what dress was desirable varied with thebeholder. A "struggle over the breeches,"
to recallAnna Clark's characterization for linking "the personal with the political
in working
class
male-dominated
federal
male
workers,
pitted management,
agencies,
history,"4
trade unions,
and women
workers
of various
persuasions.
Work clothes and street clothes, the height of heels, the length of skirts,or
the curl of hair, has generated an interdisciplinary literature that addresses the
significance of appearance for self and group worth. The new fashion and
dress history has emphasized how clothing "articulates the body, making it
sociable
and identifiable," as theorist Joanne Entwistle has argued:
"Understanding dress in everyday life requires understanding not just how
the body is represented within the fashion system and its discourses on
dress, but also how the body is experienced and lived and the role dress
plays in the presentation of the body/self."5Whether looking at nineteenth
male
century
in early
"citizen
the
and worth,
independence
and
with
autonomy.6
and appearance
Dress
of
coverings
Jewish
the workplace,
often
to class,
in
washerwomen
DC,
indicative
racialized
historians
erasers
considered
of the streets,
clues
provide
women
immigrant
in 1920s Washington,
the raiments
may
and
African-American
York,
or live-out domestics
contrasted
ship
Italian
young
New
twentieth-century
1880s Atlanta,
have
workers,"
of
of citizen
gender,
and/or
cultural identities. Stephen Norwood and Nan Enstad have highlighted theways
that both white US born and European
immigrant working-class women a
century ago questioned the authority of their betters on the picket line
to Vicki Ruiz, Mexican
through forging their own fashion. According
American
new
cannery
flappers,
popular
cultural
forms,
workers
by
also
day,
created
the cinema,
particularly
style
to
in relation
thus challenging
standards
of propriety or "respectability."7 Beauty contests, as Dorothy Sue Cobble
others
have
employer
women
desirable
Some
ones.8
rather
for example,
women
remained
of
scholars,
have
culture
workplace
their product
to be more
than women's
Meyer,
a
constructed
representations
wage-earning
place
shown,
than
laboring
have
however,
or
pleasure
historicized
both
and
reinforced
fulfilled the desires
bodies,
that
emphasized
agency.
sexual
and
that
Daniel
danger
E.
harassment
is, to be
Bender
of
sexually
in the work
and
in the garment
Steve
trade
and the automobile industry, suggesting how "predatory patterns" served to
maintain gender definitions of skill and the sexual division of labor, inwhich
associated
with
low pay
and
lesser
status.9
Desirable
Dress:
This
Rosies,
cases
two
rethinks
essay
and
Sky Girls,
the Politics
where
of Appearance
issues
125
of self-fashioning,
appearance,
sexuality, employer strictures, and state policy intertwined: the shop floors of
the Second World War and the flight cabins of postwar airlines. I locate my dis
cussion in gendered workplaces: the first,male dominated manufacturing in
which women labored "for the duration;" the second, a prototypical female
service industry inwhich fierce competition led to selling sexual allure along
with comfort and safety.Wartime factories existed to produce defense materials
as
as
rapidly
or
lizing,
so that any distraction?whether
possible,
sexual
interfered
expressiveness?that
bathroom
with
socia
breaks,
managers
output,
sought
to curb or suppress, just as they had in the manufacturing sector, especially
women
where
workers
to the production
to harness
sought
who
offered
In contrast,
clustered.
of
services
and
thus
as well
the appearance
and
attentiveness
sexual
female
enhance
as
airline
So
the carework
fantasy
could
sexuality
profit.
of their
with meals
along
be
integral
management
"hostesses,"
and
pillows.
Before the late 1960s, sky girls, later called stewardesses and then,with the
new
the gender
feminism,
neutral
attendant,
flight
a cloak
under
operated
of
respectability. Clothed in uniform dress suits that were tailored to the body,
they emanated the attractiveness of the girl next door whose beauty and
charm
marked
the extent
To
her marriageability.
that air
was
safety
more
pre
carious in the first decades of commercial flight,personal characteristics that
led to being hired put these women in harm's way. But because looking good
was integral to the job, flightattendants could display sexual attractiveness to
obtain
better
as workers
conditions
in a way
not
to women
available
in manu
both in
facturing. The performance of femininity courted dangers forRosies
the form of
hazards
women
and
girls"
industrial
and male
in pants.
responses
overalls
Indeed,
to the presence
and
other
of "sweater
to
served
cover-ups
differentiate the Rosies frommale counterparts by hailing them as women in
drag, even while individuals, including butch lesbians, found new freedoms
such
through
and
attire.10
state had
The
thus
sources.
These
include
War
World
over
oversight
access
historical
both war manufacturing
to these
wage-earners
government
to
letters
factories,
state
as on
courts
the airline
further
popular
and
by
1960s
in the
But
link appearance
of wage-earning
wartime
hearings, such
and
agencies
as do articles
workplaces,
attempt
sexual
available
to
presence
unravel
on
as
well
pleasure
as
and
twenty
actual
in
and
beauty,
to suppress
attempted
the
to job performance.
women
in both
of womanhood,
expectations
management
other
sources
our
and
assumptions,
voices
official
women's
years
later
the body of the flight attendant. In both examples,
mediation?through
grooming,
new
while
and
shipyards
lines promoted
complicates
sources,
through
of Second
inspections
as
the wartime
Fair
to government
economic
that
such
aviation,
postwar
comes
and Congressional
(FEPC),
newspapers,
these
agencies,
complaints
and
announced
expressiveness.
bodies
Formal
cultural
and
mediated
1940s
sexual
contain
magazines
However
the
industry.
as
such
reports,
Employment Practice Committee
and
often
public
constraint
the job.
air
state
policies?
in
dressing,
126
Safety,
Like
or Sweaters
Slacks,
of mill girls and male
paintings and daguerreotypes
mid-nineteenth
century,
and
photographs
movie
craftsman in the
of women
footage
riveters
and welders during the Second World War reveal proud workers posing
with the accoutrements of their trade.11Work clothes, like tools, marked
their status as contributors to the war effort.The factories and shipyards of
the Second World War were not the first time that appearance on the job gen
erated public concern and reform efforts,12but the surge of unionization
a
offered
for
space
individual
to
workers
contest
appearance
regulations?
despite discrimination by some unions and locals.13 Such women rejected
the disciplining of their bodies by management, male coworkers, or govern
ment agencies, including those charged with aiding them, like the US
Women's
Bureau
wage-earners
or
rules,
for African
or,
responded
persistent
dress
employer
labor
protective
codes,
for women.
laws
But
the FEPC.
Americans,
to
alike
not
all women
government
safety
notions
Contesting
of
ladyhood, respectability, and sexuality marked the early 1940s as one of
those moments when distinctions within the working-class and between
workers
and
the politics
middle-class
reformers,
of appearance.
The "Case of theWoman
to slacks
than
the mere
as
black
as
well
characterized
white,
in theRed Pants" highlights that therewas more
of them.
wearing
Pants
could
express
employer
control
and female subjectivity,but also political resistance to the power and authority
of supervisors. "Redhead" Carolyn Miller, a UAW activist, came to the Ford
Motor Company line in 1944 wearing bright red slacks. The supervisor issued
a reprimand, "saying that such a display of curves on the human body would cer
tainly
upset
slacks,
and
the whole
male
work
force,"
and
"docked"
her pay
by
a half-hour.
Form hugging garments certainly evoked such speculation; "tight sweaters, snug
feminine
artifices
of
color
and
style
were
distracting
influences,"
"hazards" to the workmen, Business Week had lamented in 1942, especially
when "a very shapely sweater girl wanders in to take her place in the swing
shift."14 In this case, coworkers responded by establishing a picket line.15The
union also took her grievance to the industrial "umpire" Harry Shulman, who
ruled on the question of "whether a lady's red slacks constituted a production
hazard
because
of a tendency
to distract
male
employees."
In revoking
the dis
ciplinary action against Miller, Shulman mocked the foreman's singling out red
as the color of sexual desire even as he reinforced the trope of prowlingmen and
distracting women: "Apparently bright green slacks were tolerated. And there
was no effort at specification of other articles of clothing, or the fit thereof,
which might be equally seductive of employees [sic] attention. Yet it is
common knowledge that wolves, unlike bulls, may be attracted by colors
other than red and by various other enticements in the art and fit of female
attire."16
Union
stewards
undoubtedly
grieved
on
an
appearance
issue
and
coworkers walked out because the case involved lost of pay. Still this incident
suggests how workplace appearance could not merely signify individual
Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics ofAppearance
127
preference but also reflect struggles between workers and employers thatwere
gendered as well as racialized and classed.17
Wartime propaganda portrayed overalls as glamorous, hoping to attract a
factory labor force by feeding into a work culture that emphasized appearance,
make-up, and beauty. Some suggested that a happy workforce would be an
efficient one; thatwomen's looks could compensate forwartime drab.18 One
management journal advised in 1943, "any uniform which adds bulges in the
wrong places is not conducive to employee contentment."19 Some women
in the previously masculinized
found personal power through appearance
shop floors of automobile and aircraft.20Yet sometimes a sweater was just a
sweater. The Office of War Information might reinforce the "rumor that a
tightly sweatered working companion takes a man's eyes off his machine."
But women might put a sweater over their coveralls or uniforms because the
factory "didn't have a lot of heat."21
Uniforms?issued
regulations?in place
effacing rather than
issued
management
participant observer
standardized dress
by some wartime plants?and
at others?certainly represented "a formof social control,"
enhancing the body and, by implication, the self.22 "The
strict rules to govern the dress of shipyard women,"
in
Katherine Anthony reported on Moore Dry Dock
1.Music during lunch hour atMorley Knight Co. Wayne State University,Virtual
Motor City Archive, Credit: Photograph: B?rgert Industry,?2003 Wayne State
University.
128
Richmond, California. However, these "rules [were] based fullyas much on the
principles of concealment and sexless propriety as on the purported aims of
safety."23Journalist and clothing designer Elizabeth Hawes, who worked at a
New Jerseyfactory,claimed "the girls leaped to the conclusion that it [clothingregu
was
lation]
all a plot
for women
Councilors
to make
them
unattractive
and
in company
employees
sex
their
spoil
social
welfare
appeal."24
may
departments
have lobbied for "dressing rooms and lunch rooms," but their job was "to get the
to wear
girls
and
caps"
other
protective
The
gear.25
of
presence
these
"women
guards," who "stalked vigilantly through thewarehouses, theworkshops, and the
rest rooms, looking for the coy curl unconfined by a bandanna, the bejeweled
hand,
and
police
the defiance
ity issued
the
sweater,"
recounted,
revealing
Anthony
of women
from strictures
wage-earners
for
Home
of undesirable
Economics
room,"
workers
"Know
advised,
like ordnance
of the foremen
tigator about theMinneapolis
wore
no
heels,
"high
Bureau.26
also
your
and
on
job
these
interpreted
their
and
dress
on
warnings
The
sex-appeal.
of
Bureau
for it," stressing
"action
Women's
The
styles."27
in dangerous
work
clothing"
the new women
"have
plants. Nonetheless,
factory workers
a Women's
buffaloed
and cowed,"
inves
Bureau
reported
insisted
places
like the Women's
agencies,
as attacks
dress
features,"
"'safety-first'
on "more
attention
Bureau
most
women
self-definition,
the dangers
protective
their feminin
agencies stressed safety and output, but in keeping with a
Government
quest
and
by management
to
the need
suggested
to conceal
"time-saving
to proper
work
Federal Cartridge Corporation
caps,
dangling
jewelry,
in 1942.Women
but
etc.,
rings,
the
foremen
seemed afraid to do any thing about it,"28 she harshly judged. Other women
workers
about
complained
"the
girls
seem
who
themselves,
to
it
consider
[working in a plant] a lark rather than a job. They come in bandbox attire, hair
dressed
every
activist
wrote
workers
had
In defying
women
and
week,
to
don't
dare
the Bureau.29
included
short
the regulations
touch
Instructions
hair,
to be
one
without
anything
gloves,"
on safe clothes
for women
in a net,
concealed
of management
and warnings
headdress,
of government
or
union
war
cap.30
agencies,
recruits risked reinforcing the stereotype of the factory girl, self
conscious
rather
than
class
or union
conscious,
Women
in the pursuit
of good
looks.
subtly fought against attempts to police theirdress and undermine
their sexual expressiveness. According toAnthony, "giddy charmers skirted the
bare
fringe
of the management's
dress
she wore
'nothing
regulations,
and
by
a
variety
of cunning
devices succeeded in revealing asmuch as possible of the delights beneath. (One
such was wont to say with titillatinggusto that underneath her well-fitting and
well-filled
overalls
..
.')"31
An
African-American
woman
remembered the need to distinguish gender identity: "We had towear bandan
nas and hard hats and keep them on all the time, but most all thewomen in the
shipyardswould tie theirhair up and then leave a piece of hair out in the front?
you could look ladylike. So you could know the men from the
bangs?so
women."32 Mocking the reasoning of women in the rubber plants, fictionalized
"Thelma McClung"
asked, "How is anybody going to know that a girl is a
glamour girl if she's garbed inmechanized attire?"33
2. This
image
caption
reads:
"Safe
clothes
for women
workers.
129
Illustrating
what
the
well-dressed women in search of a war job shouldNOT wear, prettyEunice Kimball,
Bendix Aviation worker, pauses at the entrance to the plant employment office
where
woman,
are
not make
the
clothes
interviewed.
workers
may
Though
potential
an indication
for a job, and Eunice's
of qualifications
sweater,
they ARE
high-heeled and open-toed slippers, jewelry and loose hair-do are not improving
her
chances
of employment.
To
contrast
the
inappropriateness
of her
costume,
note trimly-dressedAlice Tripp, Bendix guard." Bendix Aviation Plant, Brooklyn,
New York. Photograph: Ann Rosener, March, 1943. Credit: Library of Congress,
Prints& Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USE6-D-009747.
Such depictions ironically reduced welders and riveters to their sex, consti
tuting a discourse that reminded onlookers of what bulky clothes hid to empha
size thewoman underneath. The femaleness of officeworkers, who painted legs
to imitate unavailable nylons and wore tight sweaters, was expected;34 their
labor was no threat tomen's jobs and breadwinner status. But those who did
men's work were another matter. Thus, a riveter heard from her boss:
"
'you're a woman, you'll always be a woman, and ifyou don't put that hair in
you'll have the damnedest permanent you've ever had because that weld is
hot."35 This supervisory response to women with bangs was double-edged,
combining a warning about safetywith words that named women as women,
130
is, as not men,
that
then
a woman
could
Race
for frivolous
in part
be
influenced
looks.
If always
a woman,
of a man's
worthy
to
responses
with
obsession
a real worker,
wage?36
African-American
appearance.
women
pointed to advantages thatwhite women gained from their racialized bodies.
As a black woman liftinghundred-ton iron ducts, that is, doing men's work,
charged, the foreman "stopped one of the white girls from doing anything
because he could go around with her."37 Another lamented how they "were
timed in going to the rest rooms. While the white girls sat and read papers
and powdered from quarter to half and an hr." The wearing of overalls made
it impossible forwomen to climb down from a welding station and get to a
toilet and back in fifteenminutes.38
to African
Reactions
illuminate
women
American
for wartime
searching
of appearance
notions
class-based
contrasting
employment
com
the black
within
munity. In October 1943, twenty-year old Rosie Gray, a former laundress,
sought better-paying bench work at Briggs, only one of a number of factories
where a white man accepted her application and "told her to wait until she
was
sent
ment
The
for."39
Ward
to the Detroit
group, referred Gray
agency
to end
created
of
club
women,
promoted
a
of
advance
field office of the FEPC?the
contracts
and
earlier
modest
respectable,
employment
examiner Lethia W
an
like
who,
American,
concept
race
neighborhood
told her story to FEPC
African
college-educated
a
in government
discrimination
related to the war effort.40Gray
Clore?a
Club,
Employment
generation
womanhood
forged in reaction to demeaning images of Sapphire and Jezebel. In Clore's
mind, for the betterment of the race, black women had to adhere to employer
of
expectations
Clore
recorded,
proper
"was
appearance.
probably
more
The
reason
for Gray's
than
the fact
that
lack
of
success,
is a member
she
of
the
Negro race." The complaint file read: "personal appearance is definitely one
reason why she had not been employed. She was anything but well groomed."
Clore informedGray: "personal appearance is prerequisite number one in the
search for employment and particularly so in the plants where the hiring of
Negro
women
is a new
experiment,"
and
then
advised,
"much
needed
attention
to the hair. Dark tailored clothing and a less conspicuous hat." Gray also
"displayed a rather belligerent attitude."41
About another black woman denied a job in 1943, Clore wrote: "Fact #1
to prohibit the upgrading of this complainant is her personal appearance. On
the day she visited the office, this was not enhanced by her wearing slacks
that were too tightand too short, a vivid coat, dark nail polish and no hat. In
some departments her size would definitely prohibit her employment."42 Like
the shipyard supervisor who "went about among the girls of his jurisdiction
with a bottle of acetone and a handkerchief and forced them to remove their
nail polish and lipstick" in response to his wife's complaints about "the
temptations,"43
Clore
judged
the
presentation
of working-class
women
as
dangerous. But danger for her came from attacks on the reputation of black
womanhood,
morals
and
not
the
threat
of
sexually
available
war
workers
output.
on
men's
131
Sexiness and respectability accounted for two contrasting representations
of womanhood. A photograph staged by Los Angeles community activists to
counter
images
of women
as
"pachucas"
or "female
zoot
suiters"?that
is, as dis
rupters of the war effort?displayed a group of Mexican American defense
workers garbed inmodest dresses and neat hair styles, though one posed in
pants as ifto announce her factory status.44This photograph exhibited a presen
tation of womanhood closely related to respectability?that of ladyhood, rede
fined as adherence to proper feminine dress. Distinctions appeared class-based
within the white community as well. Some women may have donned a
"uniform" at work, but at the day's end, "dressed as a lady." A machinist at
theWatertown Arsenal explained that after work, "I stayed long enough to
get my face on and high heels and hose so that even the guard at the gate
said, 'Miss Kenney, you sure don't look like a factory worker.'"45 Others
drew a distinct line between work clothes and chosen clothes. They recoiled
from using "shoe stamps for work boots" with steel-toes, "which meant we
didn't have ration stamps left for dress shoes." With discretionary income,
they purchased "expensive clothes" and luxury accessories.46 A woman from
"a classy family" donned "designer" overalls to distinguish herself from co
workers,47 most of whom understood real glamour to lay in an enhanced
realm of consumption marked by shopping and nightlife, not behind plant
gates.48While many women took pride in their accomplishments as workers,
3. Eastside Journal,June 1943 issue, "Mexican Girls Meet inProtest," fromtheCarey
McWilliams Collection 1243, box 28; UCLA Department of Special Collections.
132
they also
stressed
the dances,"
"to
going
having
hair
"my
curled"
and wearing
lipstick, that is, they remembered being in the plants as coterminous, but not
same
the
their
as,
initiation
a
into
fashionable
In
culture.
beauty
this
sense,
they resembled earlier generations of laborers who distinguished their real iden
tity from workplace
of
representations
themselves.
With
war's
one
end,
white
woman claimed, "I think seventy percent of thewomen were delighted to get
out
and
of slacks
is, to return
that
bandannas,"49
to desirable,
dress.
feminine
This recollection varied from laments over having to give up pants.
Uniforms, Designer Suits, and Hot Pants
the entrance of women
Unlike
contested
presence
very
into Second World War
masculine
factories where their
rate
the male
threatened
prerogative,
for
the job, and challenged efficient running of the assembly line, postwar airlines
welcomed women to the lower-paid and temporary job of sky hostess. The
with
associated
glamour
and
pation,
the
in turn
they
lured
stewardess
attracted
even
customers
phosis as "sex objects in the sky."50These
full of
fine womanhood,"
"charm,
poise,
women
white
before
the occu
to
metamor
their popular
"girls" were to be "the epitome of
with
loveliness,"
grace,
training
that
in later lifewould create the ideal wife, mother, and citizen. By the late 1960s
were
flight attendants
and
evacuate
increased
numbers
to offer
in an
them
sought
tea, or flyme,"
"coffee,
not merely
influenced
But,
emergency.51
career
a
long term
and
by
fought
seat passengers
the new
for better
feminism,
working
con
flight attendants urged the newly established Equal
and the courts to overturn
Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC)
employer regulations and prehire contracts that forced them out because
ditions. Unionized
of perceived
deviations
riage.
attendants
Flight
in appearance
due
their
wielded
sex
to age,
pregnancy,
as a weapon
even
and mar
weight,
as
they questioned
the cultural association of youth with beauty and sexual availability. Sexuality
as both power and discipline pervaded their attempts to promote workplace
justice.52
Stewardesses became the face of flight;their service, the reason to board a
particular carrier. American Airlines' requirements for the job in 1957 were
"
typical:
'a wholesome
all-American
girl
type'
between
twenty
and
twenty-six
years of age; between five feet, two inches and five feet, eight inches tall; of 'pro
portionate weight' not exceeding 130 pounds; single; in good health; attractive;
and
...
'considerable
[possessive
of]
hair."54
In 1958,
personable
charm
as well
as a
high
degree
of intelligence and enthusiasm.'"53 The three to five, all white, selected out of
every hundred applicants attended special schools for about a month, where
management began to discipline their bodies. A more militant attendant
to
explained fortyyears later, "You've got to be willing to go anywhere?and
cut your
shortness
meant
hair
above
the collar.
Airlines
estab
lished additional grooming and deportment rules, teaching how to make up
("sparingly") and how to "walk erect, sit like a lady," and generally carry
oneself.55
"You
could
only
wear
one
shade
of
lipstick,"
another
recalled.
Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and thePolitics ofAppearance
asked
Applications
and
blemishes,
about
Interviewers
graded
figure,
legs, hands,
hips,
old
thirty-two-year
scars,
"distracting
facial
excessive
"on
hair,
and
teeth,
eyes,
of ten years"
measurements.
body
the basis
of 'first impression,
"56
one
As
"blond,
complexion.'
in 1963,
told Newsweek
noticeable
pores,
large
as
well
stewardesses
prospective
veteran
moles,
as
hair"
133
the companies
always emphasized youth, but desired looks changed: "itwas strictlypug-nosed,
all-American
freckled,
itwas
types. Then
now
and
bosoms,
they want
girls who
can hardly fit between the seats when theywalk down the aisle."57
Dress marked cultural shifts; as the hemline went up, the girl next door
image morphed into a hipper, more stylish,and explicitly sexier representation
The
of womanhood.58
in 1930 were
first stewardesses
all
nurses,
in size,
"petite"
trained as caregivers of a different sort than later bringers of food with a smile.
wore
They
over
and
capes
"flowing
uniforms.
nurses'
Soon
donned
and
hats"
shower-cap-type
they
twill.
green
smocks
grey
draped
after
Even
the
color
switched to blue, fashion designers in the 1960s found stewardesses resembling
"World War IIWAC corporals."59 The uniforms of commercial airlines evoked
themilitary, both to signifya chain of command frompilot to stewardess but also
to quell fears of flyingby associating the practice with an image of strength.By
the 1950s, individually fitted uniforms followed the contours of theirwearers,
the very
emphasizing
desses
served
best
In "pillbox
they
white
shoes,
sub
stewar
gloves,"
passengers;
trim suits, nice
hair,
and white
hats
was
however,
Sexuality,
to well-dressed
meals
elegant
women"?"neat
"American
"the
that they contained.60
of classiness.
in promotions
merged
as
bodies
epitomized
gloves"?judged
in the world."61
dressed
In the 1960s, airlines sought "High Style inBid forBusiness," though expli
cit sexuality soon would trump revamped glamour. Oleg Cassini, Emilio Pucci,
Pierre
and
Balmain,
other
haute
couturiers
the
upgraded
stewardess
uniform.
Some airlines branded their image in bizarre ways that relied on feminine
bodies. Alaska Airlines turned to a "Gay Nineties-Gold Rush theme," with
removed
duced
...
"skirts
floor-length
after
the
"air
take-off
strip,"
of
by
a
attendants
of
the
shed
"four
salon,
prostitute's
Brainiff
while
version,"
"street-length
of outer
layers
intro
garments
this "dazzling ensemble of colorful raiment, topped
one
helmet,"
space
plastic
evocative
velour,"
in which
during each trip."About
a
red
to reveal
stewardess
stated:
real female and not a busboy"?perhaps
to wear.62
you
feel
like
a
in keeping with the false eyelashes
contrasted
with
the growing
was
a
that the jet-age
stewardess
cocktail
waitress,
glorified
catering
perception
to ever greater
numbers
of
American
Airlines
dressed
attendants
passengers.63
the airline
also
her
"it makes
urged
This
reaction
in miniskirts and fishnet stockings, succumbing to rising hemlines that the
carriers previously had insisted had to fall "at least one inch below the lowest
part
of
the
distracting
knee."
... but
Of
this
new
then, what
look,
else
one
is there
male
to look
passenger
at?"
admitted:
Stewardesses
"Very
rejected
fishnets forhurting their feet.The stockingswent, but shorter dresses remained,
since
Eastern
the women
Airlines
viewed
"longer
announced
that
lengths
as
its uniform
'frumpy
"doesn't
and
unfeminine.'
look
like one.
"64
In 1970,
It's a pants
134
suit designed by David Crystal"?but
the company reassured thatwearers "still
look like a girl."65
By then, airlines were bolder in theiruse of sex. Southwest Airlines based
its image on the appeal ofwomen flightattendants and ticket agents, "dressed in
high
boots
and
hot-pants,"
who
to male
"love"
promised
commuters.
as a
But,
TWA (TransWorld Airlines) stewardess protested, "I don't think ofmyself as
a sex symbol or a servant. I think of myself as somebody who knows how to
open the door of a 747 in the dark, upside down, and under water."66 The
Civil Aeronautics Board, which required attendants on planes and specified
their training, concurred. Nothing in the regulations specified their serving
meals or flirtingwith customers.67 But theAeronautics Board never grounded
a carrier for sex discrimination; it refused involvement when feministunionists
in 1974 threatened a slowdown unless airlines withdrew objectifying
advertisements.
attendants'
Indeed,
"sexist 'Fly Me'"
over
"animosity"
Airlines'
National
fueled their militancy during a lengthy 1975
promotion
strike.68
to fit a corporate
Proudly chosen for their looks and molded
nonetheless
stewardesses
wielded
as a weapon
appearance
for group
image,
advance
ment. Photographs accompanying accounts of labor disputes pictured coffered
and trim women holding protest signs rather than cocktail trays. Striking
World Airways attendants traded miniskirts for bikinis when walking a 1970
picket line.69The strategic use of beauty comes through most powerfully in
the prolonged battle over employer mandated age ceilings. This practice insti
tuted in the 1950s led to dumping attendants just as they had gained enough
seniority
to command
better
and,
wages
along
with
dismissal
upon
marriage,
kept turnover rates high, impeding unionization and job attachment. Women
fought these bars to occupational longevity by insisting that age had nothing
to do with the ability to perform the job, but did so by capturing public attention
through
their
attractiveness.
Thus, in 1963 stewardesses working forAmerican challenged reporters to
"'Look Us Over.'" Newspapers described them as "posed prettily in their
form-fittingblue uniforms for the benefit of admiring photographers." Asked
by
was
"
the women,
the
'what's
the matter
us when
with
from
response
overwhelming
the
we
press
hit
a
'Not
32?'
Another
corps."70
thing!'
paper
sexualized flight attendant Dusty Roads as itportrayed "fire flashing from her
big baby blues, and the rest of her poured elegantly into a form-fittingblue
uniform
(measurements,
It recounted
36-24-36)."
her
'"A Lolita
declaration,
I'm not! So at thirty-five,do I look like an old bag?'" To which the reporter
stands a
"Dusty
long-legged five ft. eight and weighs
explained,
one-hundred-twenty-five
picture,
tell a
fellows."71
pounds
As
thirty-two-year-old
The
looks
and
Newsweek
of aging
doll
has
natural
commented,
something
stewardesses
her mirror
generated
blonde
"Who
if you
hair,
is American
does
not
commentary
get
the
Airlines
to
confirm?"72
during
congres
sional hearings that led to passage of theAge Discrimination inEmployment
Act (ADEA)
of 1967. Congressmen struggled with the apparent anomaly of
cRushion
a new
life.
As a UnitedAir Lines stewardess,you'il do just that.The high-flying
fashions
created for
United's stewardessesbyJean Louis ofHollywoodare oniy thebegin
makes a newwoman out ofyou is livingthestewardess life,it's
ning.What reaiiy
a kindo? Siteyou've neverknownbefore... &ri<ithatyou'ilnever forget.
Afterall,
couid you flytocities likeHonolulu.San Francisco,New Yorkand Miami,and not
some of theexcitementand adventure?Couid youmeet and help suc
remember
cessful, interesting
peopie everyday and notbecomemore interesting
yourself?
Itali beginswitha 5V?week training
course. Duringyourfirst
year as a stew
ardess, you'i!earn as much as S505 a month,plus a generous travelallowance.
as 25% of theregularfareon international
carriersto
You can also Hyforas little
cities likeRio de Janeiro,Hong Kong, and London. Ifyou're singie, over 19.
between5'2" and S'9", at least a high school graduate,and yourweight is in
proportiontoycurheight,returnthecoupon below.Well
/Y?/*"?
be pleased tosend youmore information
and an apqJ Jit***
plication.United isan equal opportunity
employer. ?lH?
Stewardess Employment
Dept. ACG, P. O. Box 66100
O'Hare FieidStation
Chicago, Illinois60666
Jrienmyekies
United
I'mat least19yearsold andmee! theofherqualifications
above.
NAME_
AODRESS?
CITY_
4. United Airlines, Advertisement forStewardesses, 1971; Credit: Leo Burnett.
135
136
still youthful workers condemned as too old. They reflected cultural construc
tions of womanhood in gallantly defending the beauty of the women, though
at the end the stewardesses failed to gain legislative redress. At one point
Representative James H. Scheuer (D-New York) "asked one of the over-thirty
to
stewardesses
'stand
up
so we
can
see
the dimensions
of
the problem.'"
He
then proclaimed opposition "withmy dying breath the notion that a woman
less beautiful,
less
less
appealing,
sensitive
after
thirty, and
sure my
I'm
is
col
leagues would agree."73 Photographed outside the Capitol, as perfect embodi
ments of American womanhood,
the stewardesses objected to both being
defined as over the hill and to the airline's selling of sex through dress.74
Their spokesperson Colleen Boland, President of theAir Line Stewards and
Stewardesses, Local 500, Transport Workers Union of America, responded to
proposals for miniskirt uniforms, with accompanying quips like "then we
could really fly the friendly thighs of United," by noting, "If this is to be the
portent of the future, then this competitive-minded industry will soon be
pleading to throw out or be exempt from such prudish laws as might prevent
or
topless
airline
bottomless
outfits
to be
is supposed
industry
for
their
... The
stewardesses
Interstate
Commerce?not
of
purpose
the
sex."75
Courts agreed. Airlines argued for a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification
(BFOQ) exemption under Title VII, that only women who possessed certain
characteristics could perform the labor. But, as theUS District Court for the
Northern District of Texas ruled in 1981, "Southwest is not a business where
sex
vicarious
entertainment
is the primary
service
provided.
the
Accordingly,
ability of the airline to perform itsprimary business function, the transportation
of passengers, would not be jeopardized by hiringmales."76 Neither did BFOQ
apply
when
it came
to marriage
a proxy
bars,
for appearance
that also
expressed
concern about pregnancy and motherhood being unfit conditions for flight.
Courts initially upheld weight requirements in so far as men also came under
such discipline and no fundamental right attached to sex or race was
involved?even
though the law was supposed to dislodge sexual stereotypes
from personnel matters.77 By the 1970s, collective bargaining victories
and strike threats eliminated age and marriage bars and modified pregnancy
rules.78
Protestors were
attendants
who
sticking with the occupation,
left for marriage
after
less
than
unlike
three
the majority of
years.
They
rejected
"the old image of being fly girls. We're professional career women and
mothers." They had been "getting sick and tired of being looked at over the
negotiating table as sweet young thingswho will take anything that themen
on the other side want to give you," confessed a United worker in 1972.
"Appearances
are
important,"
they
admitted,
"But,
we
think
the
policy
is
administered unfairly and in a degrading and humiliating way."79 Such women
formed the short-lived Stewardesses forWomen's Rights. In rejecting sexual
stigmatization, they gendered
while
unions
aligning
more
with
in their trade. By
labor struggles for dignity and personal worth,
the women's
movement
than
the male
dominated
the late 1970s, uniforms had regained a look of
137
5. New York Times, September 3, 1965, 12; "House Hears Complaint of
Stewardesses. Stewardesses Testify: Outside Capitol, where they testifiedbefore
House
on
Labor
subcommittee
far right. Credit:
Associated
on
of older
the problems
Press Worldwide.
workers."
respectability and the flight attendant workforce began
gender,
and
even
Coleen
Boland
is
to diversify in age,
race.80
Earlier discussions rarely stepped outside of an assumed whiteness. Only in
themid-1950s?under
prodding from civil rights organizations, the New York
State Commission Against Discrimination, and the President's Committee on
Government Contract Compliance?did
major airlines begin to hire African
Americans for anything but the most menial labor.81 Still they were slow to
have black women as stewardesses and, when they did, such women conformed
to regulations crafted with white women as the norm. They had to be respec
table and appear middle-class. TWA's firstone, UCLA
undergraduate Mary
ideal.82 A
Tiller, was light skinned, with features close to the Caucasian
found probable cause for race discrimination when
decade later, the EEOC
an airline rejected a black woman "on basis of distinctive racial feature of
appearance."83
Even
after
African-American
women
with airline customers in the 1980s, management
regularly
interacted
insisted they conform to
138
for example, prohibited "an all-braided
hegemonic white femininity;American,
hairstyle."84
Subject toAppearance
Wartime factoryworkers, moved into shop floors previously occupied by men,
and postwar flight attendants, placed on planes to appeal tomen, labored in
vastly different settings.Rosies toiled in ship's holes or factory nooks, where
without
was
attendants
flight
banter
sexual
observation
in public
could
view,
spin
into
violence.
by customers
usually
of
Harassment
rather
than
coworkers.
State policies and actions helped to create both workplaces, but sexuality and
appearance had contrasting implications for the processes of manufacturing
and
service
labor.
the
Moreover,
World
Second
War
an
constituted
area
for
sexual politics that, while opening up new possibilities, only could prefigure
sexual
later
In
revolutions.
cases
these
neither
nor
sexuality
larger
gendered
subjectivities were predetermined or constant; they were continually being
created and defined not only bymanagement but by working people themselves.
Wartime
to
sought
regulations
for "Rosie
the need
generated
restrain
their
even
the Riveters,"
aura
as
sexual
as
in
beings
workplace
name
the
of
efficiency and output. Though overalls and helmets denied dominant gendered
constructions
of
than
rather
neath;
up
covering
femininity,
female
suppressed,
called
sexuality
was
to what
attention
wartime
pervaded
under
production,
but not necessarily to the benefit of women who remained marked by their
sex when
were
workers
real
Women
male.
sought
to bring
back
was
what
denied through beautification either on the job or through consumption made
possible by earnings from the job.
a
also maintained
Stewardesses
stance
double-edged
their
toward
status
as
a desirable figure.Defined by beauty and glamour by employers and the public,
they protested such criteria as a job requirement even as they deployed their
appearance to fight dismissal on the grounds of age. Many individuals came
to the occupation precisely because they wished to look like a stewardess.
Rather than buying intomanagerial construction of their bodies through their
own appearance labors, their deployment of sexual appeal moved toward a
different consciousness of bodily rights,even as theymay have reinforced hege
monic
of
expressions
appearance
the
self,
the
suggests
are
women
most
Where
ideals.85
in
the
wartime
attendants'
response
for
grievances
individual
underscore
to managerial
in unionization,
inherent
power
leadership,
examples
associated
definitions
especially
with
of
where
womanhood
itself.Where antidiscrimination machinery hardly existed in the 1940s, by the
late 1960s, multiple avenues of redress had developed, including arbitration
and
bargaining,
courts,
cultural expectations
shifted
with
Desirable
an
apparent
legislation,
and
of respectable
"sexual
dress, whether
commissions.
Moreover,
dress had
revolution."
pants,
symbolic meaning, but whose
regulatory
and appropriate workplace
sweaters,
or mini-skirted
uniforms,
sexual subjectivity is expressed
contains
is not always
139
clear. Even if imposed by employers or curtailed by regulatory rules, dress may
generate new notions of self, as forwomen who found liberation through the
wearing
of pants
and
those
who
measured
up
as
a
be a proxy for other forms of contestation. But
conveyer
of pleasure
that makes
work
just
a
sky girl. Appearance
little more
may
looks might also be a
humane.
NOTES
I would like to thank research assistants Danielle
Swiontek, Jill Jensen and Carolyn Herbst
and readings by Dorothy
Academic
Senate and ISBER,
Sue
Lewis, grants from the UCSB
I also would
like to acknowledge
and Ava Baron.
Kathleen
Cobble, Victoria Hattam,
Barry,
who
shared
their outstanding
Steve Meyer,
and Elizabeth
Escobedo,
generously
work-in-progress.
1. "Marye Stumph," "Betty Jeanne Boggs," "Beatrice Morales
Clifton," in Sherna Berger
Gluck, Rosie theRiveter Revisited: Women, The War, and Social Change
(Boston, 1987), 62, 111,
210.
2. Interview inNancy Baker Wise and Christy Wise, A Mouthful of Rivets: Women atWork
inWorld War II (San Francisco,
1994), 105.
3. Frank Elkouri
and Edna
Arbitration
4th edition
Elkouri, How
Works,
Asper
(Washington, 1985), 768.
4. Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender
and theMaking
of the British
Working Class (Berkeley, 1995), 1.
and Carole Turbin, "Introduction: Material
Burman
5. Quoted
in Barbara
Strategies
14 (November
and History
378. Joanne Entwistle,
Gender
"The
Engendered,"
2002),
in Body Dressing,
and Elizabeth Wilson,
Dressed
Joanne Entwistle
eds. (Oxford,
Body,"
2001), 55.
6. David Montgomery,
Citizen Worker: The Experience ofWorkers in theUnited States with
and theFree Market During theNineteenth Century (New York, 1993); Kathy Peiss,
Democracy
at Turn of the Century New
and Leisure
York
Cheap Amusements:
Working Women
and the Land of Dollars:
Ewen, Immigrant Women
Life and
(Philadelphia,
1986); Elizabeth
Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890-1925
(New York,
1985); Tera Hunter, To 'JoyMy
Lives and Labors After the Civil War (Cambridge,
1997);
inWashington,
Clark-Lewis,
Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics
1910-1940
DC,
(Washington,
1994).
7. Stephen Norwood,
Labor's Flaming Youth: Telephone Operators and Worker Militancy,
1878-1923
(Urbana, 1990); Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women,
Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1999);
American Woman,
Vicki Ruiz, "'Star Struck': Acculturation,
and the Mexican
Adolescence,
in America,
in Small Worlds: Children and Adolescents
eds. Elliott
1920-1940,"
1850-1950,
West and Paula Petrik (Lawrence,
1992), 61-80.
8. Dorothy
It Out: Waitresses
in the Twentieth
and Their Unions
Sue Cobble, Dishing
"At the Curve of Exchange':
Postwar Beauty
Century (Urbana,
1991), 127; Vicki Howard,
at Maidenform,"
in Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender,
Culture and Working Women
Freedom:
Elizabeth
Southern Black Women's
and Culture inModern America,
ed. Philip Scranton (New York, 2001), 195-216.
E. Bender,
"'Too Much
9. Daniel
of Distasteful
Sexual
Masculinity':
Historicizing
Harassment
in the Garment
and Factory," Journal of Women's History 15 (Winter
Sweatshop
on the U.S.
Predators:
Steve Meyer,
Sexuality and Harassment
2004), 91-116;
"Workplace
in Working-Class
Automotive
Labor:
Studies
1930-1970,"
History
of the
Shop Floor,
Americas
1 (Spring 2004), 77-93.
10. In her novel of he-she identity before Stonewall, Leslie Feinberg portrays the dress of
such butches in the factory, where they were hired to replace drafted men, as well as their outfits
in the bars. See Stone Butch Blues (Ithaca, NY, 1993).
11. Kathleen
the Rubber Worker: Women Workers
L. Endres, Rosie
in Akron's Rubber
Factories During World War II (Kent, Ohio, 2000).
12. Marc
and Cynical
"Smart Women,
The
Shoes,
Linder,
Stupid
Employers:
of Sexually Discriminatory
Unlawfulness
and Adverse
Health
Consequences
Workplace
140 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006
for Female Employees,"
Footwear Requirements
Iowa Journal of Corporation Law 22 (Winter
1997), 306-309.
at Work: The Dynamics
13. Ruth Milkman,
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WWII
in the Labor Movement: Women
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(Urbana,
1987); Nancy F Gabin, Feminism
United Auto Workers, 1935-1975
(Ithaca, 1990).
14. "A New Headache,"
Business Week, October
17, 1942, 48.
15. Quoted
in Steve Meyer,
on
'"The Woman
in the Red
Slacks': Men
and Women
the Automotive
and Aircraft Shop Floor During World War
II," 54, unpublished
paper pre
sented at the 1999 North American
Labor History Conference, Wayne
State, in author's
possession.
16. Elkouri and Elkouri, How Arbitration Works, 109; Meyer,
'"The Woman
in the Red
"
Slacks'
of Employee
1, 54-6; Karl E. Klare,
"Power/Dressing:
Regulation
Appearance,"
New England Law Review 25 (Summer 1992), 1429-1430.
17. Eileen Boris, '"You Wouldn't Want One of 'Em Dancing With Your Wife': Racialized
Bodies on the Job inWWII,"
American Quarterly 50 (March, 1998), 77-108.
18. Page Dougherty Delano,
inWartime
"Making Up forWar: Sexuality and Citizenship
Women for War:
Culture," Feminist Studies 26 (Spring 2000), 33-68; Leila J.Rupp, Mobilizing
German and American Propaganda,
1939-1945
(Princeton, 1978), 93-99, 146-166.
19. "Fashion Invades the Factory," Personnel
19 (January 1943), 593-4, quoted inMeyer,
in the Red Slacks'"
"'The Woman
45-46.
20. Meyer,
"Workplace Predators."
21. Quoted
in Endres, Rosie the Rubber Worker, 102.
22. Diana
Crane, Fashion And Its Social Agendas:
Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothes
(Chicago, 2000), 89-90.
23. Katherine Anthony, Wartime Shipyard: A Study in Social Disunity (Berkeley, 1947), 21.
24. Elizabeth Hawes, Why Women Cry or Wenches with Wrenches
(Cornwall, NY,
1943),
89.
25. "Ford Motor Company, Detroit?April
20th: Employment
ofWomen,"
Report, Box
Bureau
19, file: "Michigan
1941," Papers of the Women's
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Field Office Files, Region V, National Archives
(NA).
26. Anthony, Wartime Shipyard, 21.
27. Clarice L. Scott, Work Clothes For Women, Textiles and Clothing Division, Bureau of
Home Economics, US Department
of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin No. 1905 (Washington,
DC, June 1942), 3.
and Miss Nienburg
28. Letter toMiss Anderson
from Ethel Erickson, October
24, 1942,
Box 194, file: "Twin Cities Ordnance
of Research, Women
Plant, 1942/44," RG86, Division
Workers
inWWII,
1940-1945, National Archives
(NA).
to Mary Anderson,
29. Laura
S. Parsons
1, 1943, RG86, Box 385, file: "Equal
August
Pay-1943," NA.
30. Office of War
Information, "Safe clothes for women war workers," photo
Rosener, March
1943, Bendix Aviation
Plant, Brooklyn, NY, American
Memory
Library of Congress, LC-USE6-D-009751.
31. Anthony, Wartime Shipyard, 21, 32.
32. Interview inWise
and Wise, A Mouthful of Rivets, 13.
by Ann
Project,
33. Endres, Rosie theRubber Worker, 101.
and Wise, A Mouthful of Rivets, 21.
35. Interview inWise and Wise, A Mouthful of Rivets, 13.
A Women's Wage: Historical Meanings
36. Alice Kessler-Harris,
and Social Consequences
(Lexington, 1990).
37. Letter to President fromMrs. Jackie Miller, San Mateo, Cal., 1943, Reel 112F, folder:
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Issue, Aug. 29, 1943, Exhibit C," in file: "Moore Drydock,"
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38. Letter toMr. Routledge
fromMrs. Doris Mae Williams, Vancouver, Washington, May
reel 110F, folder "Kaiser Company," RG228, FEPC
4, 1944, No. 12-BR-339,
Papers, microfilm
edition.
toMr. William T McKnight
39. Memo
from Lethia W Clore, October
12, 1943, Roll 58F,
For
the politics
of respectability, Evelyn
Brooks
file, "Briggs
#2," in FEPC
Papers.
The Women's
Higginbotham,
Righteous Discontent:
1880-1920
(Cambridge, MA,
1993), 185-229.
Movement
in the Black
Baptist
Church,
141
Civil Rights Movement:
The President's
40. Merl E. Reed,
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on Fair Employment
1941-1946
Committee
Boris,
Practice,
(Baton Rouge,
1991); Eileen
inWomen and the United
of Discrimination:
"The Gender
Race, Sex, and Fair Employment,"
and Patricia
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Smith, eds. (New York, 2003), 273-91.
41. Memo
toMcKnight, Oct. 12, 1943.
toMcKnight
42. Memo
from Clore, Oct. 21, 1943, Case No. 5-BR-1233, Reel 60F, folder
"Hudson Motor Car Company," RG228, FEPC
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43. Anthony, Wartime Shipyard, 21.
44. "Mexican-American
in Protest," Eastside Journal, June 16, 1943, cited by
Girls Meet
atWork for theWar, and
"Rosita the Riveter: Mexican American Women
Elizabeth Escobedo,
in possession of the author.
Their Community," unpublished paper, 2003 WAWH
Conference,
and Wise, A Mouthful
of Rivets, 100.
46. Interview inWise and Wise, A Mouthful
of Rivets, 54, 112, 49.
47. Interview inWise and Wise, A Mouthful
of Rivets, 195.
inPostwar
48. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics ofMass Consumption
America
49.
(New York, 2003).
and Wise, A Mouthful
Interviews inWise
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(Chicago, 1974).
51. Lindsay Van Gelder,
105; Cathleen
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(1973), 87-91,
in the
M. Dooley,
"Battle in the Sky: A Cultural and Legal History of Sex Discrimination
Ph.D. Dissertation,
of
United
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unpublished
Arizona,
2001, 83, 108.
52. Kathleen M. Barry, Femininity in Flight: Flight Attendants, Glamour, and Pink-Collar
in the 20th Century United States (forthcoming, Duke University Press) offers the
Activism
the Weight:
also her "Lifting
most
See
Flight Attendants'
analysis.
comprehensive
to Enforced
Iris: a journal about women, no. (winter/spring 1999),
Thinness,"
Challenges
Loss of Enthusiasm': Workplace
'"A Spontaneous
Feminism and
Sue Cobble,
50-4; Dorothy
ofWomen's
Service Jobs in the 1970s," International Labor and Working
the Transformation
Justice
56 (Fall 1999), 27-30, and The Other Women's Movement:
Class History
Workplace
and Social Rights inModern America
(Princeton, 2004), 74-77, 207-11.
53. "50 Start Training As Stewardesses," New York Times, November
25,1957, 39; Fredric
New York Times, April 26, 1965, 33;
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C. Appel,
11, 1965, 164.
"Why Airlines Run a 'Bride School,'" Business Week, December
54. Dirk Johnson, "Behind a Glamorous
Image, Flying Working Class," New York Times,
November
24, 1993, A22.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
"Glamor
[sic] Girls of the Air," Life, August 25, 1958, 68, 73.
inVan Gelder,
Quoted
"Coffee, Tea Or Fly Me," 87, 90.
"32 Skidoo," Newsweek, April 8, 1963, 56-57.
"Battle in the Sky," 112-118.
Dooley,
inThirties," New York Times, April 28,1963, 90;
Joseph Carter, "First Hostesses Hired
"A 3-Month Airline Experiment Turns 50 Years Old," New York Times, May
13, 1980, B16;
"Fustest with the Hostess," New York Times, May
William
15, 1960, SM74;
Barry Furlong,
"Airlines: Up From Betty Grable," Newsweek,
September 4, 1967, 58.
60. Jeanne Molli,
"Uniforms Get a Personal Touch, Too," New York Times, March
21,
1962, 44.
61. Adam Bryant, "Air Chortle Is Now Boarding," New York Times, October
2, 1994,
E5; Phyllis Lee Levin, "British Designers Arrive," New York Times, April 20, 1960, 35. For
example, "Now more service 'In a class by itself!" advertisement, New York Times, June 4,
1957, 18.
62. Tania
Long, "Airways Turn toHigh Style inBid for Business," New York Times, April
3, 1965, 76; Peter Bart, "Advertising:
2, 1967, 199; "The Wild Hue Yonder," Life, December
New Airline
Image," New York Times, April 3, 1963, 72; "Pan Am Stewardess Gets a New
for Stewardesses,"
18, 1965, 37; "Couturiers Design
Uniform," New York Times, February
New York Times, May 5, 1965, 40.
63. "Stewardess'
Job Different Cup of Tea," Los Angeles Times, December
7, 1969, 012.
64. Long,
Style;" Julie Byrne, "Men Eye New Air Hostess
"Airways Turn to High
"Uniforms Get a Personal Touch,
Uniforms," New York Times, October 25, 1970, N21; Molli,
Too;"
"Up From Betty Grable."
142 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006
65. "Our non-stops to Atlanta,"
advertisement, New York Times, March
16, 1970,16.
66. Wilson v. Southwest Airlines, 517 F. Supp. 292 (1981), 295; Southern Airways, Inc. and
Air Line Stewards
and Stewardesses
Association
Decision
of System Board
of
(TWU),
Grievance:
Termination
of C. Poag and G. Duckworth,
14, 1966, 7,
Adjustment,
September
TWU Collection, Box 32, "Local 550, ATD?1966,"
Tamiment Library.
67. "Appendix A," Statement at Hearing, Equal Employment
Stewardess
Commission,
&
12, 1967, O'Donnell
Employment
by the United States Air Transport Industry, September
for Transport Workers Union of America,
Schwartz, Attorneys
9-10, TWU Collection, Box
32, "Local 550, ATD?1967."
68. "Stewardesses
Protest Suggestive Airline Ads," New York Times, June 30, 1974, 33;
Steven Rattner,
"National Airlines
Is Nearing
Shutdown
Four Months," New York Times,
December
29, 1975, 44.
69. Don
Los Angeles Times,
Smith, "Airline Employes
[sic] Revolt Against Merger,"
December
"Stewardesses
20, 1969, B9; Marsha
Chambers,
Exchange
Trays for Picket Signs,"
New York Times, November
Bikinis For Strike Duty," Los
6, 1973, 73; "Women Wear
Angeles Times, June 23, 1970, A8.
70. Christina Kirk, "Skidoo at 32? No! Say 'Mature' Hostesses
to Airline That Wants
to
Box 32, "Local 550,
19, 1963, np, TWU Collection,
Clip Their Wings,"
Sunday News, May
Flora Davis, Moving
The Women's Movement
theMountain:
inAmerica Since
ATD?1963;"
1960 (New York, 1991), 16-25.
71. Theo Wilson,
"She's 36-24-36,
Alas
32-Plus: Air Hostesses
Fighting Retirement
Age," Daily News, April 18, 1963, 3.
72. "32 Skidoo," 57.
73. Quoted
inVan Gelder,
"Coffee, Tea Or Fly Me," 89.
74. "House
of Stewardesses,"
Panel Hears Complaint
New York Times, September
3,
1965, 12.
75. Boland
inUS Congress, Senate. Age Discrimination
in Employment Hearings Before
on Labor of the Committee
on Labor
the Subcommittee
and Public Welfare,
90th Congress,
First Session (Washington, 1967), 202.
v. Southwest Airlines at 14; Diaz
v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., 311
76. Wilson
F
Supp. 559 (S.D. Fla. 1970), at 442.
77. Barry, "Lifting theWeight,"
"Battle in the Sky," 313-64.
50-4; Dooley,
78. Georgia Panter Nielsen, From Sky Girl toFlight Attendant: Women and theMaking
a Union (Ithaca, 1982), 100-1.
of
79. Betty Liddick,
"Tail Slogan Hits Bottom,
Los Angeles
Times,
Say Stewardesses,"
"Air Stewardesses
January 25, 1974, El; Robert Lindsey,
Fight Weight Rules," New York
Times, March
4, 1972, 29, 54.
80. Cobble, The Other Women's Movement,
207-11.
a New York regional carrier, was the first in 1957. See Cobble, The Other
81. Mohawk,
Women's Movement,
83.
82. Memo
to Wilkins, Marshall,
from Herbert Hill, "Re: Employment
Carter, Wright
Discrimination
inAirlines
York State," April 1, 1957; "Draft Press Release?
Industry?New
"First Negro TWA Hostess
to The Air," The Call
Takes
16, 1958;" Bob Greene,
May
1/ folder 7, Records
Box
of the
20, 1959, all in RG9-002,
(Kansas
City, Mo.), March
Division
of Civil Rights, AFL-CIO
Archives.
Papers, George Meany Memorial
83. Decision
No. 7090, August 19, 1969, 2 FEPC
236 (1971).
84. Rogers v.American Airlines 527 F. Supp. 229 (1981), 231-33.
85. Melissa
and Pamela
"Chocs
in the
Abbott,
Tyler
Away: Weight
Watching
Airline
32 (August 1998), 433-50, highlights body labor
Contemporary
Industry," Sociology
but in light of Foucauldian
is Barry, Femininity in Flight, who
persuasive
disciplining. More
offers discourses of skill as an alternative to sexual banter.

Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics of Appearance

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