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Its 6th period throwing down Sunday, April 7th, AMC’s Mad guys has sporadically portrayed the glamour and excitement of ukrainian girls airline travel in addition to apparently crazy and carefree life led by that era’s feminine flight attendants. But, relating to a brand new guide in regards to the reputation for flight stewardesses, it absolutely was men – and some ladies – at Mad Men-like marketing agencies that invented the image associated with sexy stewardess within the place that is first.
In ” The sex that is jet Airlines Stewardesses additionally the generating of an American symbol,” journalist and historian Victoria Vantoch writes that into the mid-1960s, agencies wanting to “sex up” the stuffy trustworthiness of very early air companies started by changing advertisements portraying female journey attendants as helpful, girl across the street kinds with pictures of “beguiling brand brand new stewardesses” guaranteeing coffee, tea and even more.
Baskas: Before marketing agencies got associated with the flight industry, just how had been stewardesses portrayed and promoted?
Vantoch: within the 1940s and 1950s, the stewardess had been popularly imagined as being a paragon of virginity, domesticity and wholesomeness. Air companies cultivated the flight stewardess image very very carefully. She had been the consummate homemaker: a professional at pampering guys, serving casserole and seeking pretty.
Baskas: exactly How did the ‘in-flight’ image of stewardesses into the 1950s compare for their real world experiences?
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Vantoch: there was clearly a huge gulf between sex ideals and real women’s everyday lives in mid-century America. The stewardess icon resolved that deep chasm between real life working women and the fantasy of the full-time happy housewife in a way. Stewardesses seemed to be these quintessential 1950s housewives, yet there have been simultaneously ambitious, separate profession women that traveled definately not home.”
Baskas: What occurred to that particular wholesomeness whenever Mad guys advertising companies got mixed up in 1960s?
Vantoch: marketing agencies had been attempting to make airlines appear more hip and cool, so they really would charm to your youth market that is emerging. These advertisement agency executives knew that the youth counterculture additionally the revolution that is sexual spreading across US tradition plus they knew it absolutely was becoming essential to resonate with one of these brand brand new social mores.
Baskas: and exactly how did they’re going about transforming the stewardess image from wholesome, capable and virginal into another thing?
Vantoch: To appeal to your country’s brand brand new 1960s mores, these advertisement agencies cultivated a hipper, sexy stewardess dressed up in fashionable mini-dresses and uniforms which were additionally more revealing. The airline that is first actually produce the sexy stewardess had been Braniff. Marketing pioneer Mary Wells overran the Braniff airlines marketing and rolled away a campaign called the “Air Strip,” featuring stewardesses stripping down levels of the uniforms.
Baskas: That definitely would draw focus on the safety announcement that is in-flight. just What did other air companies do?
Vantoch: Other air companies accompanied suit: flight advertisements started stewardesses that are featuring teased locks, lying straight down on airplane seats and seeking seductively during the audience. TWA unveiled paper dress uniforms because of their stewardesses, which ripped effortlessly in trip. Pan Am kept hemlines lowest longest, but sooner or later they raised stewardess uniform hemlines aswell.
Baskas: it appears as though all that sex-kitten material would attract males. But weren’t ladies flying as passengers during this period aswell?
Vantoch: It ended up beingn’t merely about attempting to sell airline travel to entrepreneurs; it had been about offering airline travel towards the middle-class, including females, who desired to be young, hip, and trendy.
Baskas: just exactly How did the image that is sex-kitten of attendants compare for their real-life experiences?
Vantoch: Real stewardesses would not passively accept this new image and was in fact expressing, protesting, and lawfully fighting intercourse discrimination on the job well before the 1970s women’s movement gave a language and context with their complaints. In reality, stewardesses won a few of the very very very first appropriate victories for ladies into the workforce and overcome the tobacco industry with all the very first ban against cigarette smoking on the job.