Citations Needed News Brief: "Go Fly Yourself": Marketing 'Sex' and the Great Stewardess Rebellion of the 1970s
Jun 14, 2023
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Glamour Was A Carefully Crafted Product
- Airlines manufactured stewardess glamour with strict appearance rules to sell an aspirational image of travel.
- Those rules included age, weight, marital status, race, and grooming limits that enforced precarity and exclusivity.
Flight Attendant Cases Shaped Sex-Discrimination Law
- Stewardesses used Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to challenge sexist employment rules.
- Their court wins on marriage and age discrimination became legal precedent for broader workplace sex-equality rights.
More Rights Prompted More Sexualized Ads
- As stewardesses won workplace rights, airlines responded by sexualizing them more in marketing.
- Campaigns like Braniff's striptease promotions and National's 'Fly Me' explicitly turned real workers into sex objects.