Vintage Photos of Flight Attendants

When Flight Attendants Glammed It Up

WomenHistoryAdvertisingSexismNostalgiaFlight AttendantsPan Am

7 Comments

Assistant Community Manager Assistant Community Manager
This is hysterical. 
POPSUGAR Sex & Culture POPSUGAR Sex & Culture
mguy — that's an adorable story. It does sound like it was a great opportunity for women back in the day. Perhaps now, too, but I've heard about how hard and unglamorous the job is now...
bleached bleached
@ mguy... that is the greatest story.
mguy414 mguy414
My great-grandmother was a stewardess for Northwest and she absolutely loved it. At the time she was divorced and had a young daughter, and all the stewardesses were supposed to be unmarried, no kids, etc. So she was the first divorced mom stewardess. But she got to travel all OVER the world. She met my great-grandfather, who was a pilot, and they went to Japan and met a family with a gravely sick daughter and I think they paid for medical treatment for her, or something of that sort. Well they came back a year or so later and the daughter was still alive and well and they gave her this gigantic pearl, as a token of their thanks. She always had the best stories to tell. One time some snooty actor guy (famous in his own time, no one I knew) was flying with them and her friend was waiting on him and his agent. And back then they carried these super duper heavy metal trays with all the teas, coffees, etc on them and the friend had weak wrists and the snooty actor guy wouldn't even acknowledge the girl for the *longest* time. Finally his agent was all "he wants coffee" or something, so she snuck some laxatives into the drink and she said "the last time I saw him he was holding his butt, running down the terminal!" I want to be a flight attendant so bad!!!
mguy414 mguy414
My great-grandmother was a stewardess for Northwest and she absolutely loved it. At the time she was divorced and had a young daughter, and all the stewardesses were supposed to be unmarried, no kids, etc. So she was the first divorced mom stewardess. But she got to travel all OVER the world. She met my great-grandfather, who was a pilot, and they went to Japan and met a family with a gravely sick daughter and I think they paid for medical treatment for her, or something of that sort. Well they came back a year or so later and the daughter was still alive and well and they gave her this gigantic pearl, as a token of their thanks. She always had the best stories to tell. One time some snooty actor guy (famous in his own time, no one I knew) was flying with them and her friend was waiting on him and his agent. And back then they carried these super duper heavy metal trays with all the teas, coffees, etc on them and the friend had weak wrists and the snooty actor guy wouldn't even acknowledge the girl for the *longest* time. Finally his agent was all "he wants coffee" or something, so she snuck some laxatives into the drink and she said "the last time I saw him he was holding his butt, running down the terminal!" I want to be a flight attendant so bad!!!
Pistil Pistil
I never totally understood why 'stewardess' was considered such an inappropriate term, but I didn't realize how tarted-up they actually were.
grlykool grlykool
Sigh that was cool and disturbing at the same time.
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