THE BRIGHT AND THE BEAUTIFUL... Underneath their uniforms, they were simply girls- warm, soft yielding creatures who lived too fast and loved too recklessly. Everyone thought they were such angels. They didn't know about the drinks in the softly lit bars or the insistent men with the dark persuasive voices that seemed to promise so much. They didn't know about those passionate nights in those strange hotel rooms such a long, long way from home...
-Jacket copy for The Fly Girls, published 1960
It may be hard to picture in this age of deregulated air transport, discount fares, and flight attendants of both sexes, but not too long ago, air travel was new and exciting, and the airline stewardess (sometimes "hostess," never "flight attendant") was a figure of glamour and romance. Little girls could not aspire to be pilots, of course, but what did that matter? If they were lucky... and pretty enough... they could become stewardesses, travel the world, have adventures, and meet rich men. What more could a woman ask from a career?
Given the social climate of the 1950's and '60's, it is not surprising that this glamour image was strongly sexualized. The airlines recognized the fact and employed it in their advertising. Employed and exploited: who that saw it can forget the blatant sexual invitation of Braniff's "I'm Cheryl- Fly Me" campaign? Lest we come down too heavily on the airlines, it's important to note that the sexualization of the flight attendant's image permeated the popular culture, from books and movies to jokes and cartoons. Stewardesses, we all knew, were young, beautiful, and voluptuous.
The association between the glamorous image of the stewardess and the girdle her employers required her to wear was strong. Nearly all published descriptions of a stewardess's job managed to find a way to include mention of the mandatory girdle policy, as far back as an article I found in a girl's magazine from the early 1950's. Certainly by the mid-60's, popular books such as Coffee, Tea, Or Me, and The Fly Girls made repeated reference to the heroine's girdles, usually in the sense of a good-natured complaint, but sometimes mentioning the protective value of heavyweight undies when dealing with drunken male passengers with "Russian hands and Roman fingers."
Take the following, slightly condensed excerpt from The Fly Girls... written, it should be noted, by a man. A group of stews-to-be has just been handed the rules they must follow while in training:
Furthermore, except in bathing areas, (we were to) be fully attired when appearing in public, and full attire was spelled out. It meant stockings and girdles.
"Great," Donna said bitterly. "Stockings and girdles. My cup of happiness runneth over."
"Oh, boy," Annette said. "That means we wear stockings and girdles to class, and when we go out for a walk-"
I said, "Even if you go down to the lobby to mail a letter."
Donna said, "What beats me is why the hell they don't make us sleep in stockings and girdles."
I said, "Don't be flippant, now."
But we had a little latitude on Friday and Saturday nights. We were permitted to have dates, and we didn't have to be in until 2:00 A.M. Furthermore, one could get permission in special cases to leave town over the weekend, stay with friends or relatives. I couldn't see that this affected me, but Donna pounced it. "Well, thank God," she said. "I have friends and relatives all over Florida that I haven't seen in years. At least I'll get to visit them on the weekends and take my girdle off for forty-eight hours."
"Okay, Jurgy," Donna said. "What's your feeling about all these crazy rules?"
"It's their airline."
"Sure, it's their airline, "but that doesn't give them the right to order us around like cattle."
Jurgy said, "They didn't hand me an invitation to come here. I asked them. They say I have to wear a girdle and stockings, okay, I'll wear a girdle and stockings. That's all."
I find this preoccupation curious in that by all evidence, most other women were wearing the same thing. Why single out flight attendants for special mention? I can only conclude that writers found describing a stew's underwear was a convenient, and permissible, way of underscoring her image as flying sex symbol.
By 1970, social change was reaching the airline world. Not only was air travel becoming more commonplace, but flight attendants began to rebel against what they rightly perceived as exploitation. Some of the more egregiously discriminatory policies were tossed out, and along with these went the girdle requirement. In Flying High, a guide for would-be flight attendants published about this time, the author states that most airlines have dropped the girdle rule. She goes on to offer a tip for women working for airlines that still require girdles: don't throw out pantyhose with runs. "Cut off the legs," she advises, "and you can use the remaining panty portion as a light girdle that will satisfy the requirement."
Was this change in policy due to a heightened appreciation of the flight attendant's dignity, and an easing of the exploitive attitudes of airline management? Or was it simply a reflection of trends in the fashion world? I'm cynical enough to opt for the latter explanation.
A couple of bits of trivia:
- Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, started out as an organizer for a flight attendants' group. A former stew herself, she said she quit after one particularly hectic flight. While she was juggling trays, dealing with obnoxious passengers, and trying to please a demanding captain, suddenly a leering businessman tugged her sleeve and smirked, "Hey hon, you know your girdle's showing?" She later said that particular moment summed up everything she hated about the job.
- I also remember reading about an amusing court case back in the late sixties. A bunch of stews were fighting the IRS for the right to deduct the cost of their girdles as a business expense. The stewardi said since they were required to wear girdles at work, the garments could be considered part of their uniform, and thus a legitimate deduction. The judge ruled against the ladies, saying that the girdles could also be worn under civilian clothes, and thus could not be considered as uniform items.)
Enough. The discussion that follows begins with the inimitable Suzanne responding to a query.
-Virginian
From Suzanne:
Steve posted a series of questions about the requirements that airlines had in the 1960's that stewardesses (as they were then called) wear girdles. This fact was pretty well-known at the time and mentioned in articles (perhaps the journalists thought it might be titillating, who knows?). Or perhaps people remember it because it was mentioned when there were lawsuits in the '70's in which female flight attendants attempted to remove the prehistoric laws regulating everything from their age to the shape of their derrieres.
I do specifically recall a flight attendant being interviewed who said that she didn't mind the girdle requirement per se (girdles did provide some degree of protection from pinches and they were not unreasonable garments to wear if you were wearing a straight skirt and working in a job in which people often had occasion to observe you walking from behind), but she was offended by the procedure of girdle checks. Apparently a woman (I hope) was entrusted with checking to see if the stewardesses were wearing girdles. I don't know how this was done, but as someone has already observed, it would have been very easy to tell if a woman wearing a sixties stewardess uniform was wearing a girdle.
Girdle requirements were not uncommon in the '60's. I myself was required to wear a girdle when I had a summer job as a teenage salesgirl at a department store in the sixties. And there was a woman who checked us, offering the option of a discreet skirt-lifting or a touch at the hips. I thought the whole procedure was humiliating and disgusting, though, in an age in which most women wore girdles, and girdles were looked upon as a sign of neatness and good grooming, I did not resent the girdle requirement itself. I do recall hearing that Howard Johnson's and Disneyland (of all places) had girdle requirements for female employees as well. I'm sure they weren't that uncommon.
It's not difficult to remember a short scene aboard one of the western U.S. airlines during the peak miniskirt years. An extremely attractive (I mean the sort who makes the males go ga-ga) cabin attendant had added a fillip to the company-mandated orange uniform's abbreviated skirt. Whenever she had to reach for the overhead or across a passenger, the occupants to her rear got a full-blown view of a neon electric shocking pink brief panty girdle. The way this lady coordinated and filled the garment, it was memorable eye candy! Even Forrest Gump would recognize from her comportment that she knew it, too!
From Don (Later):
My view is only that of an "outsider," but in the matter at hand, a close-up one, having landed in Miami and quite by accident stumbled into a new apartment building that I found out after moving in, had 70 apartments, 60 of which were full of the last days of "The Fly Girls." At that time, Eastern, PanAm and National Airlines all had main bases at Miami, and thus, "Stewardess School" right near the airport.
(Commonly heard were lines like: "Hi, I'm Ronnie and I'm from Kansas and I got this neat airline job and I'm going to marry a captain and be rich with lots of kids!" Then, they'd find out the captains were all grandfathers, the First Officers already all had five kids and the Flight Engineers were all engaged. In time, you'd see them hook up with mechanics who were taking flying lessons in hopes of getting a flight deck job.)
My girlfriend says that back in the 60's and 70's that airlines required their flight attendants to wear girdles. Is this true?
Sure is. It went clear back to the 1930's when the first "cabin attendants" had to be Registered Nurses, too. The girls told (and even wrote a few books about) the "Stewardess School," which amounted in its own way to a sort of boot camp in a hotel. The school ran to a rigidly-maintained schedule replete with indoctrination in what it meant to be a "lady" so far as the company was concerned, plenty of glamour treatment and consulting,, and constant stress to not mess up and get washed out.
Despite a rigorous selection process, there were still some dropouts and washouts in most every class. ...BUT, suffice it to say, those who completed the course knew what the company wanted and had been well enough indoctrinated that there probably wasn't much an outsider might complain about that they wouldn't accept. After all, they were getting what they wanted out of the deal, too --what was, at the time, a glamorous job with a rather good living. Sure beat the heck out of slinging hash back in the little old home town for a living, hoping for Mr. Right to wander by.
In that context, it's easier to understand why such a requirement was acceptable. After all, they were taught it had always been that way, and that it was what the company expected of its "ladies" who worked so closely with the public.
If it is: How did they know if you really were wearing a girdle?
As already mentioned by others, with the sort of fitted uniform clothing they had, not wearing one tended to cause a rear view often described as "looking like a couple of pigs fighting in a sack." Not that difficult to spot, and really, not as nice in appearance as proper underpinnings provided. (Unnatural, perhaps, but neat and trim looking.)
Did you have to lift up your skirt to your waist in front of your supervisor?
My next door neighbor, Cheryl, told of being subjected to a "girdle inspection" by a male supervisor one day. Her choice was simple -submit to a few seconds of flashing or be laid off to think about refusing for six weeks or so, without pay.
What was the penalty for forgetting to wear a girdle?
Ask the "insiders" around here, but I really doubt one could "forget" such an item, particularly when wearing extremely tailored skirts of gabardine and similar uniform materials. In fact, part of the supervisor's prerogatives were to send a girl home if they thought their attire was not properly done.
That meant, in general, rather young, lithe women wore some rather heavy-duty foundations. Around the pool at our Miami digs, lots of red dent marks were seen every afternoon and evening, and one would hear snatches of some pretty expensive names in the "girl chatter," names like Formfit, Warner's, Gossard and such --not the sort of goods one buys at Woolworth's. Occasionally, someone would bring a piece out to display, and none of those were what one could call diaphanous.
Ah, but the "penalty," you asked about: Not merely "forget." but simply be "inadequately attired," and one got sent home. Now, seeing as this was happening in the back offices of the airport just minutes before starting work that meant a week or two of travel away from home, the "penalty" was to get sent home. And that meant a week or two until the next opportunity to join up with your "line" again --without pay.
Some here will probably recall that finally, when stewardi (just to fancy up "stewardesses") became militant, there was quite a brou-ha-ha in which PanAm stewardi claimed --and won --a case in which they claimed to suffer from a syndrome called "jet tummy" or such. They won by getting medical agreement that, indeed, there is some air trapped within internal organs, and that at the reduced cabin air pressure of jet planes, it could become painfully trapped by a girdle. (No, I'm not going to open discussion about flatulence in girdled women. Take that over to alt.tasteless.)
Further as to "penalties" of the time in general, we had one Pan Am girl come home in tears the day she reported for work sporting her new, then very stylish, "pixie" haircut. Her supervisor merely told her, "Pan Am girls don't have ears. You can stay home until yours don't show any more." She did, too --working as a barmaid until her hair grew back. (No wigs allowed, either.)
With the different styles of girdles available (long leg, control brief, open bottom), was any style acceptable as long as it was referred to as a girdle?
Strictly a judgment call for the supervisor, Suffice it to say, stewardii were required to be so well groomed as to have no lumps or bumps, yet have nothing on display, either. Bear in mind they were expected to epitomize the best in feminine grooming... even to the extent of being models for starry-eyed little girls who dreamed of one day themselves being glamour girls of the skies.
Were there any color requirements?
I can remember Cheryl showing me her National Airlines manual that said (sic) "The winter uniform is black or navy blue, while the summer uniform is beige or white. Personnel will attire themselves with undergarments in color appropriate to the outerwear." That was how I found out about Cheryl's "girdle inspection," because she had a white one on under her dark winter uniform, and no black or navy one at hand. She tried promising to buy one at her first overnight stop, but was sent home and missed her "line" anyway.
Did the airline supply you with a company-approved girdle when you were issued your uniform?
Nope. And they didn't "supply" the uniform, either. Payment for the first uniforms were deducted from beginners' pay. In general, for nine months to a year into the job, "fly girls" were as poor aa churchmice, and you'd see four or more of them packed into an apartment for reasons like the uniform deductions. As to the style of the first undergarments, that was accomplished by a fitting done by a local department store corsetiere during "stew school." If the girl didn't have something suitable or the funds to pay for it, that just became another "pay advance" to be worked off.
It would seem to me of you didn't want to wear a girdle all you had to do was buy one a couple sizes larger than your size. Wearing it under your uniform would be comparable to a pair of stretch shorts, or after whatever inspection you had to go through prior to takeoff simply run to the washroom and take it off.
That's taking it a mite too far. First, the demands and stresses of the job can sure occupy one's mind. There's little time or inclination to make a big thing of what would, in most cases, be a minor discomfort. If that was such a big thing, they'd also have to doff the high-heeled shoes, the ear-pinching earrings, and the pneumatic brassieres. By that point, one should also be washing off the greasy face makeup and relaxing the tight French-braid hairdo. ...The result of any or all these would be immediately recognizable to a critical eye ---and there were *plenty* of critical eyes in the cabin and the airport --in the form of other employees who adhered to the same rules. In other words, just try it and see how fast you'd wind up in the supervisor's office!
I just can't understand how the airlines could enforce this rule.
No doubt. The form of your questions indicates so. You'd not really ever understand The Fifties, either. I hope the preceding helps a bit.
As a corollary to the posts by "insiders" here about similar demands in working as a waitress or a store clerk, here are a couple of other vignettes:
In my first marriage, I took on two stepdaughters. Shortly after that event, their ballet teacher mandated they both wear Playtex brief girdles. The prevailing wisdom of the day was they needed support for their developing internal organs when undergoing the rigors of ballet training.
While working for ATT, I took up some fairly close acquaintances with several telephone operators; those who were the "elite crew" that worked the "overseas switchboard." That was, until the late 1960's an old manual (ex-telephone people will know the name: Number Three Toll Switchboard) "cord board," with the operators sitting up on tall stools just as in the old photos from the 1920's.
Now, the Group Chief Operator was the sort of woman who would be appropriate as Lily Tomlin's boss. She stalked around the room, looking over shoulders and correcting whatever she could catch. "Maintaining Standards" is the sort of cop-out such people use.
At any rate, I remember seeing Jane the Operator in the elevator going down at an unusual time one day. Being a friend of Jane and a number of her compatriots, I inquired. She told me she had been to the doctor for a shot at lunch time, and didn't put her girdle back on. (Now, telephone operators didn't necessarily have to meet "uniform requirements," so their undies might come from Woolworths --but they were required to wear "appropriate business office attire.")
At any rate, Jane said she didn't put her girdle back on after the doctor's jab, but just put it in her handbag. She said that shortly after getting back to work, the G.C.O. came by, smacked her on the rear with a ruler, and getting the telltale sound and reaction an ungirdled gluteus maximus would provide, told Jane to punch out and go home until she was well enough to report to work in "appropriate business office attire."
What? You find that intolerable? Then, you'd find the job intolerable, too. It's a free world --go get a job somewhere that you like better! That's the 1950's answer.
From Plane Bits:
I have been following with great interest the string about the girdle requirement for stewardesses. There have been some good postings on this subject.
Since this string first began I knew exactly the person to ask about this, but I had to wait for the right opportunity. I finally got the chance to do so at work this past Friday.
One has to be very careful about how to bring something like this up in a work environment; there is plenty of potential for misunderstanding that can result in serious consequences. I agree with Suzanne that, until within just the past few years, women have had to put up with a bunch of demeaning nonsense and harassment in the workplace. I, for one, am glad to see a lot of this stuff quashed. But, I am also a little sad that this has created a new set of barriers to communication. I would never purposely annoy, embarrass, or harass a woman at work, or anywhere else.
Yet, I find it a bit stifling to have to constantly watch every word that I say. Oh well.
(Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people out there who still haven't gotten the message yet, and there is still plenty of harassment going on.)
There is a lady named Barb who works in the administrative office at the company where I work. Barb is in her early to mid fifties, and is a classy, terrific lady with a great sense of humor and a sharp wit. We have chatted many times before, and I know that she was a flight attendant for a national carrier from 1963 through 1969. I've been wondering about how to approach her about the subject of (long past) mandatory girdle requirement for flight attendants. (No they aren't "just" stewardesses anymore. I worked for the airlines long enough to develop great respect for some of these people. And, yes, while there are some who might be called "airheads" and "airbags", by far most of the Flight Attendants that I knew worked very hard and did a fine job.)
Anyway, I was in the break room making a fresh pot of coffee when Barb walked in. We were alone as we waited for the coffee to brew. Our company has a (popular!) dress-down policy on Fridays, and I mentioned to Barb that she looked like she was going to go hiking after work. She was! She said that after work she and her husband were going to a trail up on the Flatirons. (A unique rock formation near Boulder.)
I mentioned that things have sure changed in the last several years. It would have been unthinkable for people to wear jeans, or in my case, khaki Dockers, in a business environment in years past. She agreed.
Sensing a safe opportunity to bring up the subject, I mentioned that I had recently read that stewardesses had once had a requirement to wear girdles while on duty and that this was checked out by supervisory personnel. The following is a recollection of part of our conversation:
Me: Gee Barb, this seems like it was awfully strict and formal.
Barb: Oh yes. Up until about 1968 or so we were required to wear a white or beige girdle, white or beige bra, beige or nude stockings, and a white or beige full-slip at all times that we were on duty.
Me: You're kidding. I'll bet you got awfully hot in warm weather.
Barb: Of course we did. But we had winter weight and summer weight uniforms; still, it would catch up to us when we flew from where it was cold and landed where it was warm. The light weight wool uniform could sometimes be itchy, so we were glad to have the slip to keep it comfy.
Me: Yeah, but wasn't a full-slip hot.
Barb: Not really, the biggest problem was that the cabin air was usually pretty dry and our slips and clothes could sometimes get staticky and clingy. Besides, it was very nice in cool weather.
Me: Did someone really check to see if you were wearing a full-slip and a girdle?
Barb: You bet.
Me: How, if I might ask?
Barb: Well, for one thing, you might have to show your supervisor the contents of your trip luggage before departing on a series of flights. As for on-duty checks, it was pretty easy to tell if you were wearing your slip just by the outline under the white blouses that we had to wear and by the lay of the fabric of your skirt. The girdle was easy to spot to a trained eye, and believe me, some of those supervisors had sharp eyes; not much got past some of those gals. And we never knew when a company supervisor might be on one of our flight posing as a passenger. ...
There's more to this, but this has gotten pretty long. I might post more later if anyone's interested.
And I thought the Air Force was bad; we had our bags checked every time we went on a deployment. Yes, people actually went through our bags item by item, women included. But that's another story.
From Tom:
Of course air hostesses wore girdles in those days. All well dressed women wore girdles. Yet even air hostesses, for all their training, revealed something of their girdle very occasionally. On one domestic flight (still in the days of the DC3s) one attractive, mature hostess appeared to have slipped out of her slip. The light falling on her light summer uniform at one moment was just enough to reveal the lovely lace along the hemline of the front of her open girdle, held down by the front suspenders. Obviously she was in a very pretty white girdle, the likes of which I had never seen advertised.
On another flight one of our hostesses was quite a tall woman with lovely long and shapely legs. It was at the time when hemlines were rising and although pantyhose was available girdles and stockings still predominated. The hemline of her girdle and the suspender buttons revealed she was wearing a short girdle. But was it a short open girdle or a short leg panty girdle? After the flight the hostess came and sat on a seat nearby waiting for her transport. The afternoon sun was quite low and in one of those brief moments when light and movement coincided before my gaze, she crossed one leg over the other. In that moment the light picked out the hem of her girdle running across from the top of one suspender to the top of the other. She was in a short open-bottom girdle not a panty girdle.
A Different View: from What Women Want (Dutton, 1996), by Patricia Ireland, former stewardess and current president of the National Organization of Women.
On the ground at our Florida base, we were all subject to the ironfisted rule of the grooming supervisor. This civilian drill sergeant- always a woman- was in charge of seeing to it that every flight attendant followed all the personal grooming regulations mandated by the company.
Of course, as in Tehran, these regulations may have been enforced by women, but they were usually mandated by men (although it was rumored that the wife of Pan Am's president had a say in selecting our getup). In any case, the specifications pointed to a man's image of the stereotypically ideal woman (an ideal that, in reality, few women can ever achieve, although many waste tremendous amounts of energy trying).
We stewardesses had to wear red lipstick and fingernail polish- no other color was acceptable On the ground, our black high heels had to measure at least three inches. White gloves and a pillbox hat were absolute necessities. As in training school, hair was strictly regulated: not one strand could drop below the jawline, and the style had to 'look good in the rain" (or, by extension, during an emergency evacuation at sea). Pan Am even interested itself in our underwear. Brassieres and slips were required at all times. So was the iron maiden of women's wear: the girdle.
Our grooming supervisor also kept a sharp lookout for the forbidden: glasses, false eyelashes, dangly earrings, clanky bracelets, and too many rings on our fingers or pounds on our hips. If she thought we looked a little heavy, she had the right to stick us on a scale— and suspend us if our weight surpassed company-designated limits.
Before each trip we passed by this woman's office on our way to the preflight briefing room. It was nearly impossible to sneak by without getting the once-over (especially if you looked guilty).
"Patricia, you're not wearing your girdle!" she'd yell from behind her desk. I'd stop to listen to her lecture on the importance of not jiggling when I walked.
In fact, I conveniently "forgot" to wear my girdle whenever possible. Though not as bad as the whalebone corsets foisted on women in earlier centuries (Victorian ladies were always swooning because their internal organs had been crushed together) the elastic contraptions were no picnic. They cut off circulation, made it harder to breathe during altitude changes, and wreaked havoc on varicose veins.
For its part, Pan Am must have viewed the girdle as a kind of modern-day chastity belt. Our supervisors wanted us to be friendly and flirtatious with male passengers, but they certainlv didn't want their girls looking like hookers. As long as we wore those magical girdles, it must have signified to them that our supposedly wild sexual urges could be kept safely, under control. We were mythological whores; we were also mythological virgins. As a result, Mr. So-and-So in 16A could leer or call me 'honey" without feeling unfaithful to his wife.
The truth is that most of us would wear our girdles only until takeoff. Then we'd sneak into the bathroom and stash them in our flight bags. Those damned things hurt.
Didn't your stockings fall down? -Virginian
From RTF
Do you know if all airlines had a girdle policy back in the 50s and 60s?
I know for a fact that Aer Lingus, the Irish airline had just such a policy. One woman I spoke to on the subject said their woman supervisor could tell just by looking if a girl was wearing her girdle or not, and yet I got the feeling she might have been holding something back.
I mean supposing the supervisor claimed that a girl was not wearing a girdle (just by looking) and the girl claimed she was, what was the proceedure?
This ex-stewardess said all the girls wore girdles: we're talking about 1969 here. I was present once as a teenager (in 1969) when an off duty stewardess, a girl who was quite rebellious and who hated all the rules etc, was asked by her sister "Do you have to wear a girdle?"
"Yes," came the reply through gritted teeth.
I know there was also a girdle requirement in B.O.A.C. in the 60's. In the book Walking on Air one ex-TWA stewardess was quoted as saying "Girdles were a must and girdle checks were made on a regular basis."
Another ex-TWA girl from the same period said "You could be fired for taking your jacket off."
I became aware of stewardesses, or air hostesses as we called them in Ireland, around 1964 and they always seemed like the sexiest thing on the planet - definitely "sexual icons of the jet age" as you say on your web site.
While it might seem strange to some today, the job of an air hostess was considered the dream job for any girl- certainly in Ireland- with applications outnumbering vacancies by several hundred to one. I know one ex-hostess from the 60's who, when she told the nun in charge of "careers" at her school that she wanted to be an air hostess, was scolded for having her sights too high.
I always had the impression that back then it was highly classist, in today's parlance: middle-class girls only need apply, not that it was ever stated, of course.
Aer Lingus, the Irish airline was also highly sexist: strictly girls in the cabin- no men till the scourge of sexual equality came in in the 70's. But by then the magic was over.
Back in the 60's, I used to love going to the airport- the one and only at Dublin- (usually with my parents who were delivering or collecting someone) and I must admit that even now the airport visit can still be a bit of a thrill.
Back in the 60's, catching a glimpse of those proud, smartly uniformed girls, sporting hats and gloves, usually strutting around in pairs, was a real turn on (note hats and gloves: as far as I'm concerned, an air hostess is not an air hostess unless she is wearing a hat and gloves - wearing, not carrying!) I mean those girls were so smartly turned out: compulsory make-up sparingly applied, high heels, straight knee-length skirts, strictly no jewellery and matching gloves, bags and shoes and, as I since found out, girdles underneath.
One stocking manufacturer in Ireland in the mid 60s used a picture of an air-hostess on the packet with the caption "Aer Lingus air hostesses use Bear Brand nylons" or something very similar. The point being that if air hostesses used something, it was considered a positive selling point.
My only real gripe at the time was that normally, due to government restrictions, only two airlines were allowed into Dublin; Aer Lingus, the national carrier, and BEA (British European Airways) so they were they only two sets of hostesses I normally ever saw. American airlines were not allowed to fly into Dublin, but had to land on the western seaboard at Shannon on the other side of the country. This was tied up with the government's idea about bringing business into a depressed region - it always seemed a bit corny to me, especially as I could never get to see those lovely PanAm and TWA girls, not to mention the other European hostesses.
However, the sights at Dublin were not too bad. The BEA girls had a lovely dark blue uniform - a short, high collar, boxy jacket, straight knee length skirt, matching pillbox hat and black leather handbag, shoes and gloves. Stockings, as any self respecting girl knew, were neutral (flesh coloured). While all the publicity shots showed the BEA girls wearing white gloves, any time I saw them at Dublin they always wore black ones, which suited me fine because, while white gloves are better than none at all, they always looked a bit prissy to me - matching black or navy blue shoes, bags and gloves look so delightfully co-ordinated. Anyway this was the BEA uniform from 1960 - 1967. I don't know if a girdle was worn underneath, but I feel pretty sure it was.
In the mid 60s (63 - 66) the Aer Lingus girls wore a dark green check, knee length skirt (just covering the knees), matching short, boxy jacket and underneath that a matching waistcoat (vest to Americans). Under the waistcoat a buttoned up high collar, three-quarter length-sleeve beige blouse was worn. The whole ensemble was topped off by a neat hat. Shoes, bag and gloves were in navy blue. Stockings were the ubiquitous single shade flesh colour (neutral) prescribed by the company (see above). Girdles were compulsory as was discreet make-up. Hair could not touch the collar and jewellery was forbidden.
In 1966 the uniform was changed again to a more conventional style in medium green - straight knee length skirt once more, fitted shortish jacket, yellow short sleeved blouse and yellow gloves. The hat was of a more conventional air-hostess style too. Shoes and bags were in black or navy blue - for once I can't remember. All the other rules remained the same until 1970, when this uniform was dropped along with the girdle requirement and the world went to hell after that - well for 10 years anyway when some good air-hostess uniforms started making a comeback, sadly without girdles.
The only other air-hostess uniforms I remember from that magical period was on a one off occasion when a BKS plane landed at Dublin - when I was there. BKS were one of those small British airlines that flourished in the 60's and some of them had their hostesses very sexily rigged out. The two BKS girls wore very fitted silver buttoned jackets, straight, knee length skirts and crisp, military style white shirts with black ties with the conventional air-hostess style hats. While they looked dead smart, they were a little too military looking for my liking; don't get me wrong - I like girls in a smart military uniform but the military thing is a different scene.
On the rare occasions I ever heard girls talking about friends who were Aer Lingus air hostesses, the comment invariably came up that the company was "terribly strict". I know one girl who was given out hell to (in 1969) by her supervisor (a woman) for turning up on the company premises wearing trousers, even though she was off duty. She was told curtly "Aer Lingus is not that type of company"
Well, there are some of my stewardess / air-hostess memories of the 60's. The job was seen as highly attractive and very exotic - the ultimate for many female ambitions.
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Last updated October 15, 1997