sorry group for the late post!!!!! thought we were emailing these.........
Rachel Dow
February 16th,
2016
Professor Hobbs
Five Page
Assignment/Outline
Jean Jani lies on her side on a
couch wearing only yellow panties. A record covers most of her breasts though
part of a nipple is visible. Her satin, strappy heels are still on. On the back
of the couch, her slinky lace camisole slung over the back of the couch. On the
following page, Jean Jani is dressed in her below-the-knee stewardess uniform
both at the control boards and in the cockpit, examining flight conditions,
passenger lists, and analyzing other important information pre-flight. `
Jean Jani was Playboy’s Miss July in 1957 and thus the centerfold. As the brief
article accompanying the pictures details, two Playboy employees were on a
flight and then discovered “a brown-eyed beauty in the wild blue yonder.”[1]
As the two employees explain, “…she told us she is a student stewardess…saving
money to buy a T-bird, her favorite drink is a vodka gimlet and she is the
proud possessor of a pile of Frank Sinatra.”[2]
The ‘pile of Sinatra’ would later be used to scantily cover Jani’s breast in
her centerfold photo. The two Playboy employees gave the beautiful stewardess
their boss’s business card and she was eventually named Miss July.
Jean Jani is a perfect example of
the multiple roles and personas female stewardesses were supposed to possess in
the late 1950s and early 1960s. Like Jani portrays in her centerfold photo, stewardesses
were supposed to be attractive. Many were considered sex symbols in the sky.
Not only were they subject to height and weight requirements and forced to wear
girdles, stewardesses were also chosen based on a purely subjective definition
of beauty. As Jani displays in her second page of photos, stewardesses were
supposed to be smart and well educated. Most airlines required them to have a
college education and speak at least one other language if they were working
international routes. Stewardesses were supposed to also embody the cult of
domesticity. The idea behind using women as airline stewardesses was to calm
the nerves of passengers: ‘if a woman can fly, so can you.’ Female stewardesses
were expected to cook all meals on the plane and keep the mostly male
passengers comfortable and at ease.
While initially it seems
contradictory that one profession required that a woman possess the qualities
of a domesticated housewife, ooze sex appeal, and be highly educated, examining
the social, political, and economic context in which stewardesses became an
enormous part of popular culture. The middle of the 20th century was
a period of enormous change. It saw the rebuilding of nations destroyed or even
created by World War II, the rise of the Cold War, the unleashing of mass
consumerism, and the beginnings of what would become known as the “culture
wars.” Although largely unrecognized for anything during their time except for
the glamour of their job and their beauty, flight stewardesses represented the
turmoil of the period: the transition from female domesticity to the sexual
revolution, the cultural and social facets of the Cold War, and both the gender
equality and racial equality movements. While given very little agency, the
stewardesses of the 1950s and 1960s became a cultural symbol for the mass
change the world was undergoing.
Everything the American stewardess
represented played a role in America’s battle against the Soviet Union during
the Cold War. Because of their immense popularity and incredibly strong cultural
presence, stewardesses were a great way to push American propaganda of
superiority over the Soviet Union. In this paper, I will discuss the ways in
which the Cold War battles involving gender equality in the workforce, racial
equality in the workforce, the American portrayal of domesticity, and the
showcasing of American sexuality and beauty were played out using the
stewardess as a pawn.
Outline:
1.
Introduction
2.
Cultural
Outline of the Cold War
a.
Historical
context
b.
How
the culture wars were waged in context of the Cold War
c.
How
stewardesses and their multiple facets fit into the culture wars and the Cold
war
3.
Personalize
stewardesses
a.
Talk
about strict hiring processes
b.
Analysis
of two stewardess interviews (from SFO oral archives)
4.
Propagation
of American Domesticity in the Air
a.
Way that
stewardesses were first introduced to the public in the 40s and 50s
b.
Role
of the stewardess as first a nurse and then a motherly figure
5.
Stewardesses
as Sex Symbols
a.
Outfits
i. Braniff Airlines “strip tease”
b.
Battle
to remove weight limits
6.
Gender
Battle
a.
Major
supreme court case
b.
Hiring
differences between men and women
c.
Female
only stewardesses on male only flights
7.
Racial
Battle
a.
One
of first major equal hiring cases was won black an African American woman
trying to get hired by a major airlines
8.
Conclusion
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