How a genuine ‘Mad Men’ invented the stewardess that is sex-kitten

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Its 6th season throwing down Sunday, April 7th, AMC’s Mad guys has sometimes portrayed the glamour and excitement of airline travel and also the apparently crazy and carefree life led by that era’s flight that is female. But, relating to a fresh guide concerning the reputation for flight stewardesses, it had been men – and some ladies – at Mad Men-like advertising agencies that created the image associated with sexy stewardess into the place that is first.

In ” The sex that is jet Airlines Stewardesses additionally the Making of an American symbol,” journalist and historian Victoria Vantoch writes that within the mid-1960s, agencies wanting to “sex up” the stuffy trustworthiness of very early airlines started by changing advertisements portraying feminine trip attendants as helpful, girl across the street kinds with pictures of “beguiling brand brand new stewardesses” guaranteeing coffee, tea and many other things.

Baskas: Before marketing agencies got a part of the flight industry, just exactly just how had been stewardesses portrayed and promoted?

Vantoch: into 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 specialist at pampering guys, serving casserole and seeking pretty.

Baskas: exactly exactly exactly How did the ‘in-flight’ image of stewardesses in the 1950s compare for their actual life experiences?

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Vantoch: there clearly was a huge gulf between sex ideals and real women’s everyday lives in mid-century America. In ways, the stewardess icon resolved that deep chasm between true to life working ladies as well as the dream associated with the full-time delighted housewife. Stewardesses looked like these quintessential 1950s housewives, yet there have been simultaneously committed, separate job ladies who traveled not even close to home.”

Baskas: What occurred to this wholesomeness when Mad guys advertising businesses got mixed up in 1960s?

Vantoch: marketing agencies had been attempting to make airlines appear more hip and cool, so that they would attract into the appearing youth market. These advertisement agency professionals knew that the youth counterculture and also the intimate revolution had been spreading across US tradition as well as knew it had been becoming essential to resonate with your brand new social mores.

Baskas: and exactly how did they’re going about transforming the image that is stewardess nutritious, capable and virginal into something different?

Vantoch: To charm towards the country’s brand new 1960s mores, these advertising agencies cultivated a hipper, sexy stewardess dressed up in fashionable mini-dresses and uniforms that were additionally more revealing. The airline that is first actually produce the sexy stewardess had been Braniff. Marketing pioneer Mary Wells annexed the Braniff airlines marketing and rolled down a campaign called the “Air Strip,” featuring stewardesses stripping down layers of the uniforms.

Baskas: That definitely would draw awareness of the safety announcement that is in-flight. Just exactly What did other air companies do?

Vantoch: Other air companies observed suit: flight ads started featuring stewardesses with teased locks, lying straight straight down on airplane seats and looking seductively during the viewer. TWA unveiled paper gown uniforms due to their stewardesses, which ripped effortlessly in trip. Pan Am kept hemlines lowest longest, but fundamentally they raised stewardess uniform hemlines also.

Baskas: it looks like all of that sex-kitten material would attract males. But weren’t females flying as people during this period too?

Vantoch: It wasn’t just about attempting to sell air travel to entrepreneurs; it had been about offering flights towards the middle-class, including ladies, whom wished to be young, hip, and trendy.

Baskas: exactly just How did the sex-kitten image of journey attendants compare with their real-life experiences?

Vantoch: Real stewardesses failed to passively accept this image that is new was in fact 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 number of the very very very first appropriate victories for females within the workforce and overcome the tobacco industry because of the very first ban https://www.primabrides.com/ukrainian-brides against cigarette smoking on the job.