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

Desirable dress on the job, whether pants, sweaters, or mini-skirted uniforms, contains

symbolic meaning, but whose sexual subjectivity it expresses is not always clear.

Appearance may be a proxy for other forms of contestation or just be a conveyer of

pleasure that makes work just a little more humane. This essay rethinks two cases
where issues 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: the first,male dominated manufacturing in which women labored "for
the duration"; the second, a prototypical female service in which fierce
industry
competition led to selling sexual allure along with comfort and safety. However

mediated, voices of wage-earning women in both the 1940s and 1960s announced new

expectations of womanhood, beauty, and sexual expressiveness. But while management

attempted to suppress women's bodies in the shipyards and other wartime workplaces,

by the 1960s airlines promoted the body of the flight attendant. In both examples, state

mediation?through sources available as well as actual public policies?complicates our

attempt to unravel pleasure and constraint in dressing, grooming, and sexual presence
on the job. Whether or not dress requirements employee bodies, served as a
disciplined
guarantee of efficiency or a check against accidents and the expense of worker

compensation, or new possibilities for sexual or gendered identities was hardly

opened
predetermined. Employers could demand slacks, women could wear them, but what
dress was desirable varied with the beholder.

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 buxom," one 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
seemed odd," even some war
rough masculinity, initially "very embarrassing,
workers only reluctantly returned to dresses after leaving the factory for
office, retail, or other spaces of women's labor.1 For with
slacks?along having
hair tied and "a welder's as a white
"your up" wearing helmet"?brought,
worker at the Boston Navy Yard admitted, "liberation." Pants, associated
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, Inc.

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124 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006

Duringthe 1930s, pants on women were unacceptable in industrial

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
or check accidents and the expense of worker
efficiency against compensation,
or opened new possibilities for sexual or gendered identities was hardly pre
determined. could demand slacks, women could wear them, but
Employers
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 pitted management, federal agencies, male workers,
history,"4
male-dominated 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
century male "citizen workers," young Italian and Jewish women
immigrant
in early twentieth-century New York, African-American washerwomen in

1880s Atlanta, or live-out domestics in 1920s Washington, DC, historians

have contrasted the of the workplace, often considered erasers of
coverings

independence and worth, with the raiments of the streets, indicative of citizen

ship and autonomy.6

Dress and appearance may provide clues to class, racialized 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
through forging their own fashion. According to Vicki Ruiz, Mexican
American flappers, cannery workers by day, also created style in relation to
new cultural forms, the cinema, thus challenging standards
popular particularly
of propriety or "respectability."7 Beauty contests, as Dorothy Sue Cobble and
others have shown, constructed a culture that both reinforced
workplace

employer representations of their product and fulfilled the desires of

women to be more than bodies, that is, to be
wage-earning laboring sexually
desirable ones.8 Some scholars, however, have emphasized danger in the work

rather than women's or agency. Daniel E. Bender and Steve

place pleasure

Meyer, for example, have historicized sexual harassment in the garment trade
and the automobile industry, suggesting how "predatory patterns" served to
maintain gender definitions of skill and the sexual division of labor, inwhich
women remained associated with low pay and lesser status.9

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Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics of Appearance 125

This essay rethinks two cases where issues 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 so that any distraction?whether bathroom breaks, socia
rapidly possible,
or sexual interfered with output, managers
lizing, expressiveness?that sought
to curb or suppress, just as they had in the manufacturing sector, especially
where women workers clustered. In contrast, female could be
sexuality integral
to the production of services and thus enhance profit. So airline management
to harness the appearance as well as the carework of their "hostesses,"
sought
who offered attentiveness and sexual fantasy along with meals and pillows.
Before the late 1960s, sky girls, later called stewardesses and then,with the
new feminism, the gender neutral attendant, under a cloak of
flight operated

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 her marriageability. To the extent that air was more pre
safety
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 conditions as workers in a way not available to women in manu

facturing. The performance of femininity courted dangers forRosies both in

the form of industrial hazards and male responses to the presence of "sweater

and women in pants. Indeed, overalls and other cover-ups served to

girls"
differentiate the Rosies frommale counterparts by hailing them as women in
drag, even while individuals, including butch lesbians, found new freedoms
through such attire.10
The state had over both war manufacturing and aviation,
oversight postwar
and thus historical access to these wage-earners often comes official
through
sources. These include such as of Second
government reports, inspections
World War factories, letters to state such as the wartime Fair
agencies,

Employment Practice Committee (FEPC), and Congressional hearings, such

as on the airline Formal to government and the
industry. complaints agencies
courts further contain cultural and economic as do articles in
assumptions,

popular magazines and newspapers, that link appearance to job performance.

However mediated these sources, voices of wage-earning women in both

by
the 1940s and 1960s announced new of womanhood, and
expectations beauty,
sexual expressiveness. But while management attempted to suppress women's

bodies in the shipyards and other wartime workplaces, twenty years later air
lines promoted the body of the flight attendant. In both examples, state
sources available as well as actual
mediation?through public policies?
our to unravel and constraint in
complicates attempt pleasure dressing,
and sexual presence on the job.
grooming,

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 126 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006

Slacks, or Sweaters
Safety,

Like paintings and daguerreotypes of mill girls and male craftsman in the
mid-nineteenth century, photographs and movie footage of women 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
offered a space for individual workers to 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 or, for African Americans, the FEPC. But not all women

wage-earners responded alike to employer dress codes, government safety

rules, or labor laws for women. notions of
persistent protective Contesting
ladyhood, respectability, and sexuality marked the early 1940s as one of
those moments when distinctions within the working-class and between
workers and middle-class reformers, black as well as white, characterized
the politics of appearance.
The "Case of theWoman in theRed Pants" highlights that therewas more
to slacks than the mere wearing of them. 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
upset the whole male work force," and "docked" her pay a half-hour.
tainly by
Form hugging garments certainly evoked such speculation; "tight sweaters, snug
slacks, and feminine artifices of color and were influences,"
style distracting
"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 on an appearance issue and
undoubtedly grieved
coworkers walked out because the case involved lost of pay. Still this incident
suggests how workplace appearance could not merely signify individual

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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
found personal power through appearance in the previously masculinized
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 by some wartime plants?and standardized dress
regulations?in place at others?certainly represented "a formof social control,"
effacing rather than enhancing the body and, by implication, the self.22 "The
management issued strict rules to govern the dress of shipyard women,"
participant observer Katherine Anthony reported on Moore Dry Dock in

1.Music during lunch hour atMorley Knight Co. Wayne State University,Virtual
Motor City Archive, Credit: Photograph: B?rgert Industry,?2003 Wayne State
University.

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128 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006

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 all a plot to make them unattractive and their sex
lation] spoil appeal."24
Councilors for women employees in company social welfare departments may
have lobbied for "dressing rooms and lunch rooms," but their job was "to get the
girls to wear caps" and other protective The presence of these "women
gear.25
guards," who "stalked vigilantly through thewarehouses, theworkshops, and the
rest rooms, looking for the coy curl unconfined by a bandanna, the bejeweled
hand, and the revealing sweater," Anthony recounted, suggested the need to

police the defiance of women wage-earners from strictures to conceal their feminin

ity issued by management and protective agencies, like the Women's Bureau.26
Government agencies stressed safety and output, but in keeping with a
for self-definition, women workers also these on
quest interpreted warnings
the dangers of undesirable dress as attacks on their The Bureau of
sex-appeal.
Home Economics advised, "Know your job and dress for it," stressing "action

room," "'safety-first' features," and "time-saving The Women's

styles."27
Bureau insisted on "more attention to proper work
in dangerous work
clothing"
places like ordnance plants. Nonetheless, the new women factory workers "have
most of the foremen buffaloed and cowed," a Women's Bureau inves
reported
tigator about theMinneapolis Federal Cartridge Corporation in 1942.Women
wore heels, no caps, etc., but the foremen
"high dangling jewelry, rings,
seemed afraid to do any thing about it,"28 she harshly judged. Other women
workers about "the themselves, who seem to consider it
complained girls

[working in a plant] a lark rather than a job. They come in bandbox attire, hair
dressed every week, and don't dare touch without one union
anything gloves,"
activist wrote to the Bureau.29 Instructions on safe clothes for women war

workers had included short hair, to be concealed in a net, headdress, or

cap.30
In defying the regulations of management and warnings of government agencies,
women recruits risked reinforcing the stereotype of the factory girl, self
conscious rather than class or union conscious, in the pursuit of good looks.
Women subtly fought against attempts to police theirdress and undermine
their sexual expressiveness. According toAnthony, "giddy charmers skirted the
bare of the management's dress and a of cunning
fringe regulations, by variety
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 she wore .. An African-American woman
'nothing .')"31
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?
bangs?so you could look ladylike. So you could know the men from the
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

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Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics ofAppearance 129

2. This image caption reads: "Safe clothes for women workers. 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 workers are interviewed. Though clothes may not make the
potential
woman, they ARE an indication of qualifications for a job, and Eunice's sweater,

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,

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130 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006

that is, as not men, in part for frivolous obsession with looks. If always a woman,

then could a woman be a real worker,

worthy of a man's
wage?36
Race influenced responses to appearance. African-American 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
Reactions to African American women for wartime employment
searching
illuminate class-based notions of appearance within the black com
contrasting

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 for."39 The Ward Club, a race advance
Employment neighborhood
ment group, referred Gray to the Detroit field office of the FEPC?the
agency created to end discrimination in government contracts and employment
related to the war effort.40Gray told her story to FEPC examiner Lethia W
Clore?a African American, who, like an earlier
college-educated generation
of club women, a of modest womanhood
promoted concept respectable,

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 proper appearance. The reason for Gray's lack of success,
expectations
Clore recorded, "was probably more than the fact that she is a member 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
Clore the of working-class women as
temptations,"43 judged presentation

dangerous. But danger for her came from attacks on the reputation of black
womanhood, not the threat of available war workers on men's
sexually
morals and output.

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Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics ofAppearance 131

Sexiness and respectability accounted for two contrasting representations

of womanhood. A photograph staged by Los Angeles community activists to
counter of women as or "female zoot suiters"?that is, as dis
images "pachucas"
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.

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132 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006

they also stressed going "to the dances," having "my hair curled" and wearing

lipstick, that is, they remembered being in the plants as coterminous, but not
the same as, their initiation into a fashionable culture. In this sense,
beauty

they resembled earlier generations of laborers who distinguished their real iden
of one white
tity from workplace representations themselves. With war's end,
woman claimed, "I think seventy percent of thewomen were delighted to get
out of slacks and bandannas,"49 that is, to return to desirable, feminine dress.

This recollection varied from laments over having to give up pants.

Uniforms, Designer Suits, and Hot Pants

Unlike the entrance of women into Second World War factories where their
very presence contested masculine threatened the male rate for
prerogative,
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
glamour associated with the stewardess attracted white women to the occu

and in turn lured customers even before their popular metamor

pation, they

phosis as "sex objects in the sky."50These "girls" were to be "the epitome of

fine womanhood," full of "charm, poise, grace, loveliness," with training that

in later lifewould create the ideal wife, mother, and citizen. By the late 1960s
were to offer tea, or flyme," not merely seat passengers
flight attendants "coffee,
and evacuate them in an But, influenced by the new feminism,
emergency.51
a career con
increased numbers sought long term and fought for better working
ditions. Unionized flight attendants urged the newly established Equal
Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) and the courts to overturn
employer regulations and prehire contracts that forced them out because
of perceived deviations in appearance due to age, pregnancy, weight, and mar

attendants wielded their sex as a weapon even as

riage. Flight 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 charm as well as a
[possessive of] personable 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
explained fortyyears later, "You've got to be willing to go anywhere?and to
cut your hair."54 In 1958, 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 wear one shade of another recalled.
only lipstick,"

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Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and thePolitics ofAppearance 133

Applications asked about "distracting scars, moles, large pores, noticeable

blemishes, and excessive facial hair" as well as measurements.

body
Interviewers graded prospective stewardesses "on the basis of 'first impression,
"56
and As one "blond,
figure, hips, legs, hands, hair, eyes, teeth, complexion.'

thirty-two-year old veteran of ten years" told Newsweek in 1963, the companies

always emphasized youth, but desired looks changed: "itwas strictlypug-nosed,

freckled, all-American types. Then itwas bosoms, and now
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
of womanhood.58 The first stewardesses in 1930 were nurses, all "petite" in size,

trained as caregivers of a different sort than later bringers of food with a smile.
wore capes and hats" and grey smocks
They "flowing shower-cap-type draped
over nurses' uniforms. Soon they donned green twill. Even after 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 bodies that they contained.60 however, was sub
emphasizing Sexuality,

merged in promotions of classiness. In "pillbox hats and white gloves," stewar

desses served elegant meals to well-dressed passengers; they epitomized

"American women"?"neat hair, trim suits, nice shoes, white gloves"?judged
as "the best dressed in the world."61
In the 1960s, airlines sought "High Style inBid forBusiness," though expli
cit sexuality soon would trump revamped glamour. Oleg Cassini, Emilio Pucci,
Pierre Balmain, and other haute couturiers upgraded the 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
"skirts ... of red evocative of the
floor-length velour," prostitute's salon,
removed after take-off to reveal a version," while Brainiff intro
"street-length
duced the "air strip," in which attendants shed "four layers of outer garments

during each trip."About this "dazzling ensemble of colorful raiment, topped

a space helmet," one stewardess stated: "it makes you feel like a
by plastic
real female and not a busboy"?perhaps in keeping with the false eyelashes
the airline also urged her to wear.62
contrasted This
with reaction
the growing

that the jet-age stewardess was a cocktail waitress,

perception glorified catering
to ever greater numbers of American Airlines dressed attendants
passengers.63
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
of the knee." Of this new look, one male passenger admitted:
part "Very
... but to look
distracting then, what else is there at?" Stewardesses rejected
fishnets forhurting their feet.The stockingswent, but shorter dresses remained,
"64
since the women viewed "longer lengths
as
'frumpy and unfeminine.' In 1970,

Eastern Airlines announced that its uniform "doesn't look like one. It's a pants

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134 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006

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
boots and who "love" to male commuters. But, as a
high hot-pants," promised
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. Indeed, attendants' over National Airlines'
"animosity"
"sexist 'Fly Me'" promotion fueled their militancy during a lengthy 1975
strike.68

Proudly chosen for their looks and molded to fit a corporate image,
stewardesses nonetheless wielded appearance as a weapon for group 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 wages and, 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
"
the women, 'what's the matter with us when we hit 32?' 'Not a
by thing!'
was the response from the press Another paper
overwhelming corps."70
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, 36-24-36)." It recounted her declaration, '"A Lolita
I'm not! So at thirty-five,do I look like an old bag?'" To which the reporter
explained, "Dusty stands a long-legged five ft. eight and weighs
one-hundred-twenty-five pounds and has natural blonde hair, if you get the

picture, fellows."71 As Newsweek commented, "Who is American Airlines to

tell a thirty-two-year-old doll something her mirror does not confirm?"72

The looks of aging stewardesses generated commentary during congres
sional hearings that led to passage of theAge Discrimination inEmployment
Act (ADEA) of 1967. Congressmen struggled with the apparent anomaly of

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Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and thePolitics ofAppearance 135

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
ning.What reaiiy makes a newwoman out ofyou is livingthestewardess life,it's
a kindo? Siteyou've neverknownbefore... &ri<ithatyou'ilnever forget.Afterall,
couid you flytocities likeHonolulu.San Francisco,New Yorkand Miami,and not
remember some of theexcitementand adventure?Couid youmeet and help suc
cessful, interestingpeopie everyday and notbecomemore interesting yourself?
Itali beginswitha 5V?week training year as a stew
course. Duringyourfirst
ardess, you'i!earn as much as S505 a month,plus a generous travelallowance.
You can also Hyforas little as 25% of theregularfareon international
carriersto
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 ap-
qJ Jit***
plication.United isan equal opportunityemployer. ?lH?

Jrienmyekies
Stewardess Employment
Dept. ACG, P. O. Box 66100
O'Hare FieidStation
Chicago, Illinois60666 United
I'mat least19yearsold andmee! theofherqualifications
above.
NAME_

AODRESS?
CITY_

4. United Airlines, Advertisement forStewardesses, 1971; Credit: Leo Burnett.

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136 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006

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
stewardesses to 'stand up so we can see the dimensions of the problem.'" He
then proclaimed opposition "withmy dying breath the notion that a woman is
less beautiful, less less sensitive after sure my col
appealing, thirty, and I'm

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 bottomless outfits for their stewardesses ... The of the
topless purpose
airline industry is supposed to be Interstate Commerce?not 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
vicarious sex entertainment is the primary service the
provided. 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 bars, a proxy 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 sticking with the occupation, unlike the majority of
attendants who left for marriage after less than three 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.
are admitted, "But, we think the is
"Appearances important," they policy
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 labor struggles for dignity and personal worth,
while more with the women's movement than the male dominated
aligning
unions in their trade. By the late 1970s, uniforms had regained a look of

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Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and thePolitics ofAppearance 137

5. New York Times, September 3, 1965, 12; "House Hears Complaint of

Stewardesses. Stewardesses Testify: Outside Capitol, where they testifiedbefore
House Labor subcommittee on the problems of older workers." Coleen Boland is
on far right. Credit: Associated Press Worldwide.

respectability and the flight attendant workforce began to diversify in age,

and even race.80
gender,
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
Tiller, was light skinned, with features close to the Caucasian ideal.82 A
decade later, the EEOC found probable cause for race discrimination when
an airline rejected a black woman "on basis of distinctive racial feature of
Even after African-American women interacted
appearance."83 regularly
with airline customers in the 1980s, management insisted they conform to

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 138 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006

hegemonic white femininity;American, for example, prohibited "an all-braided

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 observation sexual banter could spin into violence. Harassment of
was
flight attendants in public view, usually by customers 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. Moreover, the Second World War constituted an area for

sexual politics that, while opening up new possibilities, only could prefigure
later sexual revolutions. In these cases 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 the need for "Rosie the Riveters," even as
generated workplace
to restrain their aura as sexual in the name of
regulations sought beings

efficiency and output. Though overalls and helmets denied dominant gendered
constructions of up called attention to what was under
femininity, covering
neath; rather than female sexuality pervaded wartime production,
suppressed,
but not necessarily to the benefit of women who remained marked by their
sex when real workers were male. Women to bring back what was
sought
denied through beautification either on the job or through consumption made
possible by earnings from the job.
Stewardesses also maintained a stance toward their status as
double-edged
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 ideals.85 Where most wartime examples underscore individual

of self, the attendants' response to managerial definitions of

expressions
appearance suggests the power inherent in unionization, especially where
women are in the for associated with womanhood
leadership, grievances
itself.Where antidiscrimination machinery hardly existed in the 1940s, by the
late 1960s, multiple avenues of redress had developed, including arbitration
and bargaining, courts, legislation, and regulatory commissions. Moreover,
cultural expectations of respectable and appropriate workplace dress had
shifted with an apparent "sexual revolution."

Desirable dress, whether sweaters, or mini-skirted uniforms, contains

pants,

symbolic meaning, but whose sexual subjectivity is expressed is not always

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Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics ofAppearance 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
of pants and those who measured up as a may
wearing sky girl. Appearance
be a proxy for other forms of contestation. But looks might also be a
conveyer of pleasure that makes work a little more humane.
just

NOTES
I would like to thank research assistants Danielle Swiontek, Jill Jensen and Carolyn Herbst
Lewis, grants from the UCSB Academic Senate and ISBER, and readings by Dorothy Sue
Cobble, Victoria Hattam, and Ava Baron. I also would like to acknowledge Kathleen Barry,
Steve Meyer, and Elizabeth Escobedo, who generously shared their outstanding
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 Asper Elkouri, How Arbitration Works, 4th edition
(Washington, 1985), 768.
4. Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and theMaking of the British
Working Class (Berkeley, 1995), 1.
5. Quoted in Barbara Burman and Carole Turbin, "Introduction: Material Strategies
Engendered," Gender and History 14 (November 2002), 378. Joanne Entwistle, "The
Dressed Body," in Body Dressing, Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson, eds. (Oxford,
2001), 55.
6. David Montgomery, Citizen Worker: The Experience ofWorkers in theUnited States with
Democracy and theFree Market During theNineteenth Century (New York, 1993); Kathy Peiss,
Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure at Turn of the Century New York
(Philadelphia, 1986); Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women and the Land of Dollars: Life and
Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890-1925 (New York, 1985); Tera Hunter, To 'JoyMy
Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War (Cambridge, 1997);
Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics inWashington,
DC, 1910-1940 (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);
Vicki Ruiz, "'Star Struck': Acculturation, Adolescence, and the Mexican American Woman,
1920-1940," in Small Worlds: Children and Adolescents in America, 1850-1950, eds. Elliott
West and Paula Petrik (Lawrence, 1992), 61-80.
8. Dorothy Sue Cobble, Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth
Century (Urbana, 1991), 127; Vicki Howard, "At the Curve of Exchange': Postwar Beauty
Culture and Working Women at Maidenform," in Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender,
and Culture inModern America, ed. Philip Scranton (New York, 2001), 195-216.
9. Daniel E. Bender, "'Too Much of Distasteful Masculinity': Historicizing Sexual
Harassment in the Garment Sweatshop and Factory," Journal of Women's History 15 (Winter
2004), 91-116; Steve Meyer, "Workplace Predators: Sexuality and Harassment on the U.S.
Automotive Shop Floor, 1930-1970," Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the
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 L. Endres, Rosie the Rubber Worker: Women Workers in Akron's Rubber
Factories During World War II (Kent, Ohio, 2000).
12. Marc Linder, "Smart Women, Stupid Shoes, and Cynical Employers: The
Unlawfulness and Adverse Health Consequences of Sexually Discriminatory Workplace

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 140 ILWCH, 69, Spring 2006

Footwear Requirements for Female Employees," Iowa Journal of Corporation Law 22 (Winter
1997), 306-309.
13. Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during
WWII (Urbana, 1987); Nancy F Gabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the
United Auto Workers, 1935-1975 (Ithaca, 1990).
14. "A New Headache," Business Week, October 17, 1942, 48.
15. Quoted in Steve Meyer, '"The Woman in the Red Slacks': Men and Women on
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' 1, 54-6; Karl E. Klare, "Power/Dressing: Regulation of Employee 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, "Making Up forWar: Sexuality and Citizenship inWartime
Culture," Feminist Studies 26 (Spring 2000), 33-68; Leila J.Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War:
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,
"'The Woman in the Red Slacks'" 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
19, file: "Michigan 1941," Papers of the Women's Bureau (RG86), Field Service Division,
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.
28. Letter toMiss Anderson and Miss Nienburg from Ethel Erickson, October 24, 1942,
Box 194, file: "Twin Cities Ordnance Plant, 1942/44," RG86, Division of Research, Women
Workers inWWII, 1940-1945, National Archives (NA).
29. Laura S. Parsons to Mary Anderson, August 1, 1943, RG86, Box 385, file: "Equal
Pay-1943," NA.
30. Office of War Information, "Safe clothes for women war workers," photo by Ann
Rosener, March 1943, Bendix Aviation Plant, Brooklyn, NY, American Memory Project,
Library of Congress, LC-USE6-D-009751.
31. Anthony, Wartime Shipyard, 21, 32.
32. Interview inWise and Wise, A Mouthful of Rivets, 13.
33. Endres, Rosie theRubber Worker, 101.
34. Interview inWise and Wise, A Mouthful of Rivets, 21.
35. Interview inWise and Wise, A Mouthful of Rivets, 13.
36. Alice Kessler-Harris, A Women's Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences
(Lexington, 1990).
37. Letter to President fromMrs. Jackie Miller, San Mateo, Cal., 1943, Reel 112F, folder:
"Boilermakers' Auxiliary Union Issue, Aug. 29, 1943, Exhibit C," in file: "Moore Drydock,"
RG228, FEPC Papers, San Bruno Branch, NA.
38. Letter toMr. Routledge fromMrs. Doris Mae Williams, Vancouver, Washington, May
4, 1944, No. 12-BR-339, reel 110F, folder "Kaiser Company," RG228, FEPC Papers, microfilm
edition.
39. Memo toMr. William T McKnight from Lethia W Clore, October 12, 1943, Roll 58F,
file, "Briggs #2," in FEPC Papers. For the politics of respectability, Evelyn Brooks
Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church,
1880-1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 185-229.

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Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics ofAppearance 141

40. Merl E. Reed, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement: The President's
Committee on Fair Employment Practice, 1941-1946 (Baton Rouge, 1991); Eileen Boris,
"The Gender of Discrimination: Race, Sex, and Fair Employment," inWomen and the United
States Constitution: History, Interpretation, and Practice, Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach and Patricia
Smith, eds. (New York, 2003), 273-91.
41. Memo toMcKnight, Oct. 12, 1943.
42. Memo toMcKnight from Clore, Oct. 21, 1943, Case No. 5-BR-1233, Reel 60F, folder
"Hudson Motor Car Company," RG228, FEPC Papers, microfilm edition.
43. Anthony, Wartime Shipyard, 21.
44. "Mexican-American Girls Meet in Protest," Eastside Journal, June 16, 1943, cited by
Elizabeth Escobedo, "Rosita the Riveter: Mexican American Women atWork for theWar, and
Their Community," unpublished paper, 2003 WAWH Conference, in possession of the author.
45. Interview inWise 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.
48. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics ofMass Consumption inPostwar
America (New York, 2003).
49. Interviews inWise and Wise, A Mouthful of Rivets, 163, 190.
50. Paula Kane, Sex Objects in the Sky: A Personal Account (Chicago, 1974).
51. Lindsay Van Gelder, "Coffee, Tea Or Fly Me," Ms. (1973), 87-91, 105; Cathleen
M. Dooley, "Battle in the Sky: A Cultural and Legal History of Sex Discrimination in the
United States Airline Industry, 1930-1980," unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
Arizona, 2001, 83, 108.
52. Kathleen M. Barry, Femininity in Flight: Flight Attendants, Glamour, and Pink-Collar
Activism in the 20th Century United States (forthcoming, Duke University Press) offers the
most comprehensive analysis. See also her "Lifting the Weight: Flight Attendants'
Challenges to Enforced Thinness," Iris: a journal about women, no. (winter/spring 1999),
50-4; Dorothy Sue Cobble, '"A Spontaneous Loss of Enthusiasm': Workplace Feminism and
the Transformation ofWomen's Service Jobs in the 1970s," International Labor and Working
Class History 56 (Fall 1999), 27-30, and The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice
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
C. Appel, "Airlines Vie With Cupid for Stewardesses," New York Times, April 26, 1965, 33;
"Why Airlines Run a 'Bride School,'" Business Week, December 11, 1965, 164.
54. Dirk Johnson, "Behind a Glamorous Image, Flying Working Class," New York Times,
November 24, 1993, A22.
55.
"Glamor [sic] Girls of the Air," Life, August 25, 1958, 68, 73.
56.
Quoted inVan Gelder, "Coffee, Tea Or Fly Me," 87, 90.
"32 Skidoo," Newsweek, April 8, 1963, 56-57.
57.
58.
Dooley, "Battle in the Sky," 112-118.
Joseph Carter, "First Hostesses Hired
59. inThirties," New York Times, April 28,1963, 90;
"A 3-Month Airline Experiment Turns 50 Years Old," New York Times, May 13, 1980, B16;
William Barry Furlong, "Fustest with the Hostess," New York Times, May 15, 1960, SM74;
"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
2, 1967, 199; "The Wild Hue Yonder," Life, December 3, 1965, 76; Peter Bart, "Advertising:
New Airline Image," New York Times, April 3, 1963, 72; "Pan Am Stewardess Gets a New
Uniform," New York Times, February 18, 1965, 37; "Couturiers Design for Stewardesses,"
New York Times, May 5, 1965, 40.
63. "Stewardess' Job Different Cup of Tea," Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1969, 012.
64. Long, "Airways Turn to High Style;" Julie Byrne, "Men Eye New Air Hostess
Uniforms," New York Times, October 25, 1970, N21; Molli, "Uniforms Get a Personal Touch,
Too;" "Up From Betty Grable."

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 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 (TWU), Decision of System Board of
Adjustment, Grievance: Termination of C. Poag and G. Duckworth, September 14, 1966, 7,
TWU Collection, Box 32, "Local 550, ATD?1966," Tamiment Library.
67. "Appendix A," Statement at Hearing, Equal Employment Commission, Stewardess
Employment by the United States Air Transport Industry, September 12, 1967, O'Donnell &
Schwartz, Attorneys for Transport Workers Union of America, 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 Shutdown Is Nearing Four Months," New York Times,
December 29, 1975, 44.
69. Don Smith, "Airline Employes [sic] Revolt Against Merger," Los Angeles Times,
December 20, 1969, B9; Marsha Chambers, "Stewardesses Exchange Trays for Picket Signs,"
New York Times, November 6, 1973, 73; "Women Wear Bikinis For Strike Duty," Los
Angeles Times, June 23, 1970, A8.
70. Christina Kirk, "Skidoo at 32? No! Say 'Mature' Hostesses to Airline That Wants to
Clip Their Wings," Sunday News, May 19, 1963, np, TWU Collection, Box 32, "Local 550,
ATD?1963;" Flora Davis, Moving theMountain: The Women's Movement inAmerica Since
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 Panel Hears Complaint of Stewardesses," New York Times, September 3,
1965, 12.
75. Boland inUS Congress, Senate. Age Discrimination in Employment Hearings Before
the Subcommittee on Labor of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 90th Congress,
First Session (Washington, 1967), 202.
76. Wilson v. Southwest Airlines at 14; Diaz v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., 311
F Supp. 559 (S.D. Fla. 1970), at 442.
77. Barry, "Lifting theWeight," 50-4; Dooley, "Battle in the Sky," 313-64.
78. Georgia Panter Nielsen, From Sky Girl toFlight Attendant: Women and theMaking of
a Union (Ithaca, 1982), 100-1.
79. Betty Liddick, "Tail Slogan Hits Bottom, Say Stewardesses," Los Angeles Times,
January 25, 1974, El; Robert Lindsey, "Air Stewardesses Fight Weight Rules," New York
Times, March 4, 1972, 29, 54.
80. Cobble, The Other Women's Movement, 207-11.
81. Mohawk, a New York regional carrier, was the first in 1957. See Cobble, The Other
Women's Movement, 83.
82. Memo to Wilkins, Marshall, Carter, Wright from Herbert Hill, "Re: Employment
Discrimination inAirlines Industry?New York State," April 1, 1957; "Draft Press Release?
May 16, 1958;" Bob Greene, "First Negro TWA Hostess Takes to The Air," The Call
(Kansas City, Mo.), March 20, 1959, all in RG9-002, Box 1/ folder 7, Records of the
Division of Civil Rights, AFL-CIO Papers, George Meany Memorial Archives.
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 Tyler and Pamela Abbott, "Chocs Away: Weight Watching in the
Contemporary Airline Industry," Sociology 32 (August 1998), 433-50, highlights body labor
but in light of Foucauldian disciplining. More persuasive is Barry, Femininity in Flight, who
offers discourses of skill as an alternative to sexual banter.

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