Boris Dress
Boris Dress
Boris Dress
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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.
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
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
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
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
independence and worth, with the raiments of the streets, indicative of citizen
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
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
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,
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
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
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.
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
[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
2. This image caption reads: "Safe clothes for women workers. Illustrating what the
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,
that is, as not men, in part for frivolous obsession with looks. If always a woman,
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.
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.
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
thirty-two-year old veteran of ten years" told Newsweek in 1963, the companies
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
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
Eastern Airlines announced that its uniform "doesn't look like one. It's a pants
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.
Jrienmyekies
Stewardess Employment
Dept. ACG, P. O. Box 66100
O'Hare FieidStation
Chicago, Illinois60666 United
I'mat least19yearsold andmee! theofherqualifications
above.
NAME_
AODRESS?
CITY_
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
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
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
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
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.
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."
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.