Why did they wave bye-bye?
Used to be that one of the most noticeable aspects of the commercial flying experience was the really spectacular good looks of those uniformed young women who demonstrated the oxygen masks and exit routes, and performed such quaint and now virtually defunct offices as passing out meals and distributing assorted magazines in plastic binders. For the most part they wore uniforms far spiffier than today’s (always featuring, if memory serves, sheath skirts, fitted jackets, and perky little hats), and their jobs were looked upon as glamorous ones, whatever the reality may have been.
Glen Whitman, Megan McArdle, and Daniel Foster all take a turn at explaining why it’s come down to today’s far less pulchritudinous and friendly skies. Whitman thinks deregulation priced the hotties out of the flight attendant market, but McArdle points out (rightly, I believe) that it was unions and feminism:
Stewardesses used to be subject to all sorts of extremely strict rules: they couldn’t be married, couldn’t gain weight, couldn’t get pregnant, couldn’t be much over 30. If you fire everyone who violates those rules, then yes, you will select for a much “hotter” group of women than the current crop.
You could probably still get a large group of young, hot women to take a job that involves free flights all around the world. But those jobs are no longer open, because airlines stopped firing all the old, fat parents. Thanks to a combination of feminist shaming, union demands, and anti-discrimination laws. Moreover, once they no longer fired people over a certain age, union seniority rules immediately started selecting for older workers, in two ways: layoffs are usually last hired first fired, and older people have a lot of sunk costs in terms of pension accrual and seniority, so they’re less likely to leave. If you fly a major airline, you’ll notice very few stewardesses in their twenties.
This, like Whitmans’ explanation, is probably correct as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough. McArdle is too young to remember flying way back when. But my first flight was as a child in 1960, and I do remember. And the stewardesses in those days were not just today’s attendants with all the older and fatter ones weeded out; they were, as a rule, far more lovely than the very youngest and slimmest among today’s crop.
It’s Foster who touches on some of the other factors that have changed since then, important parts of the picture:
I’d add another factor (one McArdle starts to get at) that is likewise probably interdependent on the other two: The labor market for young women has changed. Since the 60s heyday of Pan Am, women have vaulted past men in educational achievement at the same time that a variety of professions requiring college degrees have become more accessible to them. Thus many of the young, attractive women who might have opted for a career as a flight attendant now have more options available to them. Also, flying has become a decidedly more mundane ”” even dreary ”” affair in the last few decades, and thus is probably less appealing as a career than it would have been to a young woman in 1965, when the idea of the jet-set lifestyle was probably more alluring.
It’s apparent to anyone who remembers the olden days that not only have the stewardesses changed, but the flying public has changed as well. For example, whenever I used to fly, as a teenager and a young woman, I got all dressed up, pretty much like those stewardesses. No, I didn’t wear white gloves and a hat, but I always wore a dress, hose, and heels. And so did just about everybody else (or the masculine equivalent). Flying was special, very different from taking a Greyhound bus, and one dressed for the role.
In this drawing, take a look not only at the stewardess, but at those all-important passengers in the background (climbing that flight of stairs):
What’s more, the specialness extended to the experience itself. Planes were more often half-empty (or even less) rather than full to the brim. The methods airlines now use for making sure they don’t waste a trip and precious fuel by flying a plane that is less than heavily loaded with passengers were not as highly developed, and probably the profit margin per passenger was higher (the cost of a flight for the consumer was certainly higher in relative terms). I would guess that a stewardess’s job was a lot easier; if they served the customers with greater charm and a more dazzling smile it was probably because it was a lot more pleasant to do so.
What’s more, some of the perks must have seemed perkier. Nowadays it’s not that hard to do a great deal of traveling, if you get a lot of frequent-flier miles and points, and shop well to get the bargain seats. In the early 60s we ordinary folk couldn’t afford to do much traveling, and one of the great attractions of being a stewardess was the chance to do just that. Stewardesses joined the airlines to see the world; now there are a host of ways to accomplish the same feat.
[NOTE: For those looking for more photos of the olden days, a four-part illustrated series begins here. It’s a bit heavy with photos from the mini-skirted late 60s rather than the era I’m primarily talking about, but it’s full of eye candy for the guys and retro fashion for the ladies.
Here’s another look at flying back in the good-bad old days.]
