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Its 6th period throwing down Sunday, April 7th, AMC’s Mad guys has occasionally portrayed the glamour and excitement of airline travel plus the seemingly crazy and carefree everyday lives led by that era’s female flight attendants. But, in accordance with a fresh book in regards to the reputation for flight stewardesses, it had been men – and some ladies – at Mad Men-like marketing agencies that created the image regarding the sexy stewardess when you look at the place that is first.
In ” The Jet Sex – Airlines Stewardesses additionally the generating of an American Icon,” journalist and historian Victoria Vantoch writes that into the mid-1960s, agencies wanting to “sex up” the stuffy standing of very very early air companies started by changing advertisements portraying feminine trip attendants as helpful, girl across the street kinds with pictures of “beguiling brand brand brand new stewardesses” guaranteeing coffee, tea and more.
Baskas: Before marketing agencies got involved in the flight industry, just how had been stewardesses promoted and portrayed?
Vantoch: within the 1940s and 1950s, the stewardess had been popularly thought being a paragon of virginity, domesticity and wholesomeness. Air companies cultivated the flight stewardess image very carefully. She had been the consummate homemaker: a professional at pampering males, serving casserole and seeking pretty.
Baskas: just exactly exactly How did the ‘in-flight’ image of stewardesses when you look at the 1950s compare with their actual life experiences?
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Vantoch: there is a gulf that is huge 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 looked like these quintessential 1950s housewives, yet there have been simultaneously committed, separate job women that traveled not even close to home.”
Baskas: What took place to that wholesomeness whenever Mad guys advertising businesses got active in the 1960s?
Vantoch: marketing agencies had been wanting to make airlines appear more hip and cool, so they really would impress into the rising youth market. These ad agency executives knew that the youth counterculture in addition to revolution that is sexual spreading across US tradition as well as knew it absolutely was becoming essential to resonate with one of these brand new social mores.
Baskas: and exactly how did they’re going about transforming the image that is stewardess wholesome, capable and virginal into another thing?
Vantoch: To charm into the country’s brand brand new 1960s mores, these advertising agencies cultivated a hipper, sexy stewardess wearing stylish mini-dresses and uniforms that have been additionally more revealing. The airline that is first actually produce the sexy stewardess ended up being 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: ukrainian bride That truly would draw awareness of the in-flight security statement. Just exactly What did other air companies do?
Vantoch: Other air companies followed suit: flight adverts started featuring stewardesses with teased locks, lying straight straight down on airplane seats and seeking seductively during the audience. TWA revealed paper gown uniforms for his or her stewardesses, which ripped effortlessly in flight. Pan Am kept hemlines lowest longest, but ultimately they raised stewardess uniform hemlines aswell.
Baskas: it looks like all that sex-kitten stuff would attract guys. But weren’t ladies flying as people during this time period too?
Vantoch: It wasn’t just about offering airline travel to entrepreneurs; it had been about offering airline travel towards the middle-class, including ladies, whom wished to be young, hip, and trendy.
Baskas: exactly exactly just How did the sex-kitten image of trip attendants compare with their real-life experiences?
Vantoch: genuine stewardesses would not passively accept this brand new image and have been expressing, protesting, and lawfully fighting intercourse discrimination on the job a long time before the 1970s women’s movement gave a language and context because of their complaints. In reality, stewardesses won a few of the first appropriate victories for females into the workforce and overcome the tobacco industry because of the very first ban against smoking cigarettes on the job.