SPEAKER_02 0:14

Welcome to the Pan Am Podcast, brought to you by the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York. This podcast and our museum are dedicated to celebrating the legacy of the world's most iconic airlock, Pan American World Airways. My name is Tom Betty, and I'm the host of this program. Thank you for joining us. The Pan Am Museum Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information at the Panamuseum.org. Again, our website is the Panamuseum.org. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. If you are using Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving a review. It will help others discover this program. This podcast is sponsored by the generous personal support of Mr. Adam Aaron, the CEO and chairman of AMC Theaters. He is also president of our sister organization, the Pan Am Historical Foundation. If you're not familiar with Pan Am, welcome. We are honored to have you here and for you to learn about what we're all about. If you already know of Pan Am, worked for, or flown on the airline, or just love our history, it's good to be with you again. So with that, let's get this episode in the air, so to speak. Welcome aboard your Pan American jet clipper. Nell is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Travel section and wrote the column Carry On from 2016 to 2019. She has written for Travel and Leisure, Bonapet, Conde Nas Traveler, The Wall Street Journal magazine, and Tea Magazine. Nell is also the author of the Audible Original called Off the Menu. Her recent work, The Great Stewardess Rebellion, is a book about how as travel in the Jet Age became more and more popular in the 1960s, women from across America applied for jobs as stewardesses. They were drawn to the promise of glamour, the chance to travel the world, and as an alternative to the traditional occupations for women of this time period, like homemaking, nursing, and teaching. But as the number of stewardesses grew, so did their suspicion that the job was not as picturesque as the ads would have them believe, including some of their supervisors spying on their personal lives. Thankfully, this was not the practice of Pan Am or TWA. These women had to adhere to strict weight limits at all times. If they gained a few extra pounds, they were suspended from work. For many airlines, stewardesses could not marry or have children or risk losing their employment. Requirements for hairstyles and makeup had to be followed and was strictly enforced, and girdles were mandatory at all times. It was also common for domestic airlines that stewardesses had to resign by age 32. In the latter half of the 1960s, stewardesses began to push back against their employers, creating an employment movement that changed the industry. Nell McShane Wolfhurt crafts a rousing narrative of female empowerment, the paradigm shifting of the 1960s and 1970s, the labor movement, and a cadre of gutsy women who fought for their rights and won. Gloria Steinem said of Nell's book, quote, the true story of women who stood up to huge corporations and won, creating momentous change for all working women. Our high school intern, Michael Gettner, will be assisting me with Nell's interview as guest co-host. Now on to our interview with the author of the book The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched a Workplace Revolution at 30,000 Feet. Nell McShane Wolfhart.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

So I read your book, The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched a Workplace Revolution at 30,000 Feet. And it is much talked about in Pan Am circles. And I am honored to have you on the program.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Well, that's exciting to hear about. And I would love to learn more about these secret Pan Am circles.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

So let's talk about this incredible era of women in the workplace in the air. When I read this book, it was eye-opening and I my mouth dropped several times with some of the stories that you explored. So let's just go right into it. Let's talk about women in the air beginning in the 1950s and some of the challenges that these incredible women had to overcome.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Well, like you, Tom, my jaw also dropped many, many, many times over the course of researching this book. Um, even when I first heard about it, you know, which was, you know, essentially it was a debunking of this golden age of travel. You know, we think a lot about um, you know, Don Draper getting served cocktails in first class, the kind of, you know, the things that Pan Am used to do, like slicing roast beef for the passengers and this sort of luxurious, glamorous travel experience. And when I learned that, you know, while that was all true, the flip side of that was that like the working conditions for the people actually doing the labor, the people in the cabin, were atrocious. I was like, okay, this is like an interesting story. I need to chase it down. And the things that I learned, um, things about how, you know, if you wanted to be a stewardess in the 60s, well, starting in the 50s and through the 60s, you know, if you got married, you were fired. If you got pregnant, you were fired. If you turned 32, or in some, in some cases, 35, you would also be fired. And besides that, things like you couldn't have crooked teeth, you had to have clear skin, you couldn't wear glasses. And of course, you had to keep to an extremely, extremely strict weight limit. Um, and they would weigh you before you got on the plane and they could pull you off a flight if you were a couple of pounds over your permitted maximum. I mean, these things were just like overwhelming to me. This whole idea that um this job that looked so glamorous from the outside was actually incredibly difficult, and the airplane cabin was maybe the sexist workplace in America.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Let's talk about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this landmark watershed moment in American history that changed many industries, including the commercial aviation industry.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Yes. Um, so the the that comes up a lot in my book because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was about equal employment opportunity, and it involved the foundation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And it basically said that, you know, people were entitled to everyone was entitled to the same working conditions and job conditions and pay, and they couldn't be discriminated against based on, you know, race or sex or religious affiliation, things like that. Um, and what I learned and what I document in the book is how stewardesses were actually some of the first people to realize that they could, you know, wield this as sort of a weapon, and that it was mostly intended to deal with race. Um, and even the the aspect of it that talked about employment, that was also about race. Like that was the intention, pure and simple. But the stewardesses were the ones who realized like this could also be applied to, you know, women's work, to the fact that women were, you know, in, you know, in enduring these like really sexist working conditions, that they didn't have the same pay as men, that they didn't have the same opportunities. And, you know, they ran with it. Like they filed case after case with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They took their cases to court, and they made real actual change that working women in America are still benefiting from today.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

And in reading your book, I was pleased to see that uh Panam fared very well compared to some of the other airlines, that we won't mention them by name, uh American and United, but uh but some of the stories that you shared uh were just unbelievable. Uh and there's a lot of younger people that listen to this podcast. And I would like for you to talk to them because a lot of this, it's hard for them to even comprehend that your employer at the airline was spying on you and your supervisor was making sure that you weren't living with a man or you weren't secretly getting married or having kids. I mean, this is a concept that is very foreign to younger people.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

It really is. And I also feel like at this current moment that, you know, when we're speaking um with the sort of dismantling of Roe versus Wade, and we're at a kind of a watershed moment in America where like women's right, women are literally losing rights by the minute. Like we're actually, you know, our rights as citizens are disappearing um in front of our very eyes. So it's interesting to go back to a time when, yeah, like, you know, it was accepted that women's working conditions would not be as good as men's, and that, yeah, you could not be married and also be an airline stewardess. And as you pointed out, Tom, like some airline supervisors, they would read local papers to see if there were any marriage announcements to make sure that none of their stewardesses had like snuck off to get married and you know, wanted to keep their jobs, you know, like women would get married. There was some estimates that up to 30% of them were married and kept working. Um, they would just take their ring off before they got on the plane. They would sometimes get a second phone line back in the days of landlines, so that if the airline called, like they would answer that phone and the husband would not be allowed to answer that phone.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

It's like the bat phone.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

It's like the bat phone, exactly. Yes, we need your help. Um, so they they had to jump through all these hoops, essentially. And it was this like really like, you know, um paternalistic, I guess, sort of viewpoint of the airlines that like these women were were being controlled, everything from you know, their hairstyle to how much they weighed to whether or not they could have children was all under the airlines control. Um, and I do think it's really interesting, you know, for you know, it was new information to me. And I think it's you know new information for women, you know, much younger than me and probably for men too, you know, to be fair.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

So let's talk about the women that you interviewed. There were a couple in particular that uh are talked about in the book, and you follow their journey.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah, um, I have you know two main characters in my book. Um, and we sort of watch them change and watch their lives evolve as we watch the industry change. Um, and we see the change that they propelled themselves. So the the first one is Pat Gibbs. Um, all these women are still alive, by the way, and um still, still, you know, I interviewed them for the book and we had many, many, many conversations and coffees and lunches and whatever. Um, so Pat Gibbs came from Missouri. She was like, I think most of the women who applied for jobs in the early 60s, who applied for jobs with the airline, you know, she didn't want to be a teacher and she didn't want to be a man's secretary. And, you know, to become an airline stewardess was this like incredibly aspirational, glamorous position. Um, so she applied for the job and she went off to the American Airlines Training College, otherwise known as the Charm Farm, um, for six weeks of training, and then she went on to work for American Airlines. Um, and the story really traces her transformation from basically a small town girl whose biggest ambition in life was to become a supervisor at American Airlines. Like she wanted to get into management, have a job with American Airlines. That was all she wanted. And then as she became more familiar with these sort of grotesque rules and regulations, all the strictures the airlines put into place, she, you know, it's just started to rub her the wrong way. And she basically transforms over the course of the book into this militant labor organizer, um, like a powerful unionist. And she ends up, spoiler alert, but leading leading the American Airlines stewardesses out of the transport workers' union and into their own independent woman-led union. She's just this incredibly dynamic character, so fascinating, like a really great person to talk to, but I think also a great person to read about because she is just, she takes no BS from anybody. Um, and to be able to learn the story of how she got to that place was was really interesting. Um, and my sort of second heroine of the book, I guess, was a woman named Tommy. She was also a stewardess. She joined American Airlines about 10 years after Pat in the early 70s. And she was sort of a, you know, a social activist from the beginning. Um, and like most of these women, she joined. She thought she'd fly for a few years and then go back to like social activism work. Or, you know, a lot of women joined, they figured they'd fly for a few years and then they'd get married. Um, very few people thought of it as a career, you know, they saw it as a temporary job because you aged out of it or you married out of it, and that was it. Um, and Tommy also basically got caught up in this sort of whirlwind of change that was happening in the 70s, not just in the airline industry, but you know, in the United States, like the women's movement and the the incredible consciousness raising that was happening at the time. She gets carried away by this also, and she also becomes like a leader of the flight attendants, um, and an and another person who's very caught up in the story of their, you know, their rights as workers and their position in the labor movement. Um, and what these two women sort of helped me realize was that flight attendants are kind of at the forefront of the labor movement and they have been for a long time. And their story is sort of just emerging right now.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

What did you learn about Pan American World Airways in your interviews and research?

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Um, this is a great question because most of the women that I interviewed for the book worked for domestic airlines. Um, you know, American Airlines didn't fly overseas at that time. And then a few of them worked for Pan Am and TWA. And these airlines were considered like the top of the top. You had to know several languages to get a job, one of them. I mean, getting a job as a stewardess at any airline was incredibly difficult. Like there were millions of people applying, and a very few of them got the job. So that's what sort of attached kind of the air of glamour to it in the first place, right? It really was like an exclusive job. But to work at the two, the two airlines that flew abroad, this was even better. Um, I had women telling me about working at Pan Am in the 60s and 70s. And also like the working conditions were better. You know, you weren't taking shuttle buses from the airport to the Marriott with the rest of the crew after flying six times between, you know, Buffalo and New York City. You were flying to Paris, and then, you know, there was a special car to pick you up from the airport, and you were being transported to a hotel with a pool, and then you went shopping on your days off. And because they traveled all around the world, like the Pan Am stewardesses, they they were experts, you know, they could tell you where to get the best leather shoes in Italy, they could tell you where to have like the finest bistro food in Paris. They had this sort of air of cosmopolitanism that the domestic stewardesses just did not have. Um, it was really like an elevated, elevated job. And when we think, I think about airline glamour and the glamour of the 60s, like we really are thinking about, you know, Pan Am.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

To our listeners, I mentioned in an earlier episode that we have a high school intern with us, and Michael Gentner is uh helping me with this interview, and he is going to ask Nell a couple questions.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

What would be your message to people my age or around my age who are looking to get into your field today or who are just looking to write about history like you did?

SPEAKER_00 17:45

That's such a good question. How long do we have?

SPEAKER_02 17:50

We have as long as you'd like.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Okay, so I will say that before I wrote this book, I was a travel journalist. Um I was freelance, I did that for maybe 15 years. And I would say that I was like at the top of the field. Um, I had a column in the New York Times, I wrote for Travel and Leisure, Connie Nast Traveler, like all the sort of you know, landmark media publications. And I don't want to go back to it. Like um, to be a journalist right now and to work in media is really difficult. The pay sucks. Um, publications are closing all the time, and then then all those editors go freelance. So, journalism in general, while super important, is probably best attempted if you have rich parents. That's just the truth. That's just like that's what it is. It's really hard out there to get a job. The traditional jobs of media are gone. Um, you can no longer sort of become like a staff writer somewhere and enjoy a cushy lifestyle that just doesn't really exist anymore, or just for a very privileged few. And if you want to write about history, um, well, honestly, your choices are kind of fewer because if you want to do that in a way that is commercial, you know, that like publish in the Smithsonian magazine or write a book or something, like there just aren't that many outlets for history writing. Um, there are a few, but you have to have lots of qualifications and lots of experience. And probably the best path to get into that, to tell you the truth, Michael, is podcasting. Like you will probably reach more people. You can reach out and interview lots of people. You can, you know, ask the top names in the field to come on your podcast. Some of them will, some of them won't. Um, and that it's just the way anybody can do it. Um, while to get into these sort of like prestige media circles, whether through publishing a book or writing for magazines, like it's just it's a real slog. Um, I hope that's not too dispiriting of an answer. But I will also tell you that if you know, you can just keep trying and keep asking, and eventually somebody will give you a break. That's how I did it. Like I just pestered people nonstop. And every time I, you know, thought of an idea, I would send it out and I would just took a lot of action very quickly. So I would say don't be afraid to ask for everything. The worst thing happens is someone could say no. And there's an expression in Brazil, um, which is you already have the no. So you might as well ask, maybe you'll get the yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

That's very, that's very profound. Let's get back to your book for a moment. So Pan Am was one of the first airlines that allowed their flight attendants to marry. They were all also they paid their flight attendants much more than maybe all of the airlines. TWA was competitive in that that field, but that was it. But they didn't, at least in the 1960s, they did not have male flight attendants. And with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, there was a lawsuit in the early 1970s where a gentleman sued Pan Am because he felt that he wanted to be a flight attendant. Can we talk about the Diaz case?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Sure. Yeah. Um, Celio Diaz was somebody who, yeah, a man who wanted to be a flight attendant. He was turned away for the job and he sued. And the result of the case basically using Title VII, you know, using the idea that you could not use um sex as a barrier to entry for any job in which it was not like in real, like really required, like an actual business need. Um, and he took this case to court and he won. And that just opened the floodgates. Uh, you know, a couple of years after that, some of the classes at the flight attendant schools were 50% male. Like it was just, you know, people wanted to travel and they wanted to have this job and they could see the glamour and the freedom. Um, and Celio Diaz, unfortunately, never managed to get the job because after he won his case, he was too old to get a job as a flight attendant. Because, as I said before, there were these age restrictions. On, you know, and how on how old you could be to get to get the job. So he never managed to live his dream, but he did open the doors for male flight attendants. And when you see them on planes today, that's who you can thank.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

What was most surprising to you in doing research for this book?

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Oh my God, there were so many surprises. Um, I think some of the some of the ones that were on this, like the general sexism of the job, the age limits, the getting fired once you were married, all those things were shocking and horrifying. But sometimes it was the smaller stuff, like the surface stuff that almost took me more aback, like the sexist ads that they had going on in the 60s and 70s. Um really just like selling the stewardesses as sex objects in order to get people on the plane, or like the insane uniforms that these to put these women in. Um I think Pan Am actually did a pretty good job of having reasonable looking uniforms, but at American Airlines, they went through some really extraordinary um choices. One of them. Southwest had orange hot pants and white lace up go-go boots. That's crazy. And I mean, the idea of serving like hot meals to a plane full of passengers wearing hot pants is truly, uh, truly astonishing. I mean, kudos to those women. Uh, American Airlines had sort of a frontier look, which was like a tartan mini skirt, like a fringe vest, and like a raccoon style hat, sort of like a Daniel Boone style hat. And you can imagine yourself like at the front of the plane trying to, you know, point out the exits and show people how to use the oxygen masks, wearing this like cartoonish getup, um, not so dignified, and they had a hard enough time getting getting people to take them seriously. Um, a TWA, by the way, they also had paper dresses for a while.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Yes. Uh, we covered that in the special TWA edition of the Panium podcast in paper dresses. Yeah, who thought that was a good idea?

SPEAKER_00 24:03

I mean, it seems dangerous at the very least, and undignified, yes, at the other end. Um, one of the other things I think that startled me was that for a short while on American Airlines, and I think one other airline, they insisted that the stewardesses kiss the passengers as they exited the plane. Like give them a kiss on the cheek and be like, have a nice day. Um, and of course, like these men would sort of swivel their face around and try and catch a stewardess on the lips. But like, um, there's actually a really striking photo in my book of Pat Gibbs, the one I mentioned earlier, being sort of forcibly kissed by a male passenger. But this was like actually a job requirement that you had to kiss these people on the cheek as they left the plane. Wild.

unknown 24:45

Wild.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Michael, do you have another question for now?

SPEAKER_01 24:50

As you said, we're kind of witnessing the dismantling of a lot of rights that um women have had. What stories in your book or outside that you've researched do you think are especially relevant today?

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Oh, um, well, like I mentioned earlier, I think, you know, abortion rights are on everybody's mind right now. And if they aren't, they should be. Um, but in there's a a lot of the book in which I talk about um how the stewardesses would go to get, you know, illegal abortions because, you know, they would lose their job if they were pregnant. And so they basically, you know, had like these clandestine back alley abortions that the company almost sanctioned. You know, the company wanted these women to have abortions. Um, so they would almost help them or like not comment on them, even though it was illegal. And once it became legal in some states, there were even charter flights that the stewardesses would arrange. So it became legal in New York before it became legal in Texas. So they would arrange charter flights for pregnant stewardesses to come to New York to get abortions. Um, and you know, we're even like like you know, like you said, Michael, like we're seeing that right now with people talking about like crossing state borders to get abortions. Will that still be legal? Um, and this is something they were doing like, you know, 60 years ago. So it's like my answer to your earlier question. This is sort of a dispiriting answer. But um, I do think that is like the like the primary thing that that's on my mind at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

But you're right, there's lots of parallels to what you covered in your book and what's going on today, 60 years later.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah, I mean, I think that we have an idea that there's gender equality now in in a lot of areas. And certainly it's better than than it was at the time of my book. I even mentioned that in the early 70s, like it was difficult for a woman to get a credit card in her own name. And if she wanted to buy a house by herself, like she would have to get her father to sign for it. Um, there were just all these like limits on on her freedom. Um, and okay, some of those things are gone today for sure. Like I have credit cards. Um, but you know, when it comes to things like pay disparity, like that still exists and it's just getting getting better in the slowest way imaginable. Um, you know, there's just, and like, you know, the backlash against the Me Too movement and all these sorts of things, like um it's a difficult time for women's rights in general, I would say. But I am really encouraged by people maybe of of Michael's age and and his generation who I think are like, they're not really putting up with this BS, you know, and I do see them sort of um becoming more active and um really speaking out and even you know, on on on so many issues um from abortion to school shootings. And honestly, it it gives me hope. I'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

What else surprised you when writing this book?

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Um there are well, the one of the things that I think surprised and delighted me the most was the discovery of a group in the 1970s called Stewardesses for Women's Rights. Um, and this was a group of stewardesses that got together. They met in a basement in the village in New York. Um, and they basically got together to improve working conditions for stewardesses. And there were stewardesses there from all different airlines. And, you know, Tommy, one of the women of my book, she goes to the meeting, she brings along her friends. Like it just has this wonderful sort of 70s vibe. They're they're going in their bell bottoms, they're going to, you know, sit in a circle in this basement and they're going to talk about women's rights and how they can improve their working conditions. They walk into their first meeting and Gloria Steinem is there. Um, and it just like really, you know, I hadn't, I mean, obviously, I know about Gloria Steinem. For for anybody who doesn't, she's basically the pioneer of second wave feminism in the United States, like the founder, one of the founders of Ms. Magazine. She was basically like the most famous feminist in the world. And she was at this tiny basement meeting in the village of stewardesses. Um, stewardesses for women's rights, and they got an incredible amount of press. They were a really tiny grassroots organization. I don't think their membership ever topped 1500, but they were grabbing headlines, they were in all the papers. You know, journalists love the hook of like stewardesses fighting for women's rights. You know, this is crazy. Um, they also have an incredibly wonderful 70s logo of sort of the pictograph for women, you know, like the circle with the cross underneath, um, with wings out to the side, like the sort of wings you would see pinned on like a captain's jacket. Yeah, it's like I think it's really iconic. I have many things in my house with that on it. So yeah, I think they were a really iconic group, and I I dedicate a good amount of time to them in the book because they did some really extraordinary stuff and really of you know of the 70s. It's really um nostalgic.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Have you gotten any criticism from anyone in the aviation industry?

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Um, am I gonna jinx myself if I say no? I I occasionally get, I mean, I get emails um all the time from former flight attendants who have read the book. And mostly they're like, thank you for writing the book, and it's so great to you know hear these stories and see them out in the world. Um sometimes I they complain that I haven't gone into enough detail, but I think I've gone into plenty of detail. Um, but no, I haven't really had any pushback, um, which I guess is good. But you know, again, this story happened, you know, in the 60s and 70s. So a lot of the people who are who are named in it are dead. And I think it might um it might seem like a piece of history to a lot of people, although to me it seems pretty fresh.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

Michael, do you have any any more questions for now?

SPEAKER_01 30:59

What was the process of researching the book to really have a finished piece? And I think that could be really helpful for people my age who could get advice from an author like yourself on researching and how to research well.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Sure, that's a really good question. Um, I will first of all say for anybody who doesn't know much about publishing, that if you want to write a nonfiction book, you know, like a book about real history, um, you have to write first a book proposal. It's probably like 30 or 50 pages. You usually have a sample chapter, you have an outline of what the book is about, you write little outlines of every chapter. So before you even can sell the book, you have to do an incredible amount of research. Like I spent maybe six months doing like phone calls and interviews with Pat and Tommy and other people in the book. Um, and then maybe six months like writing and tweaking and editing the proposal. So before you even like sniff any money, you have to put in all this time and effort. So my top recommendation would be if you're interested in getting into writing, you know, um nonfiction, make sure that you're really interested in the topic because you're going to spend an incredible amount of unpaid labor on it. Um, and there's no guarantee of getting any kind of payment. Um, so once you sell and sell the proposal, if you're lucky enough to sell the proposal and get in advance, then you you you trot off and you do, you know, your your research. So for me, that was because um luckily for me, my main characters in the book were still alive and you know, very much with it. And they have like also really great, funny, interesting people with a lot to say. You know, um, Tommy brought up prime primary sources earlier. Like they were just amazing, funny, like really useful primary sources with frankly incredible memories. Like, I cannot remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but these women could remember incidents from like 1965. It blew me away. Um, so to be good, you know, first of all, you want to be kind of good at interviewing. You want to be patient, you want to be a good active listener. Um, and you have to be willing to have a lot of conversations about things that are not strictly related to your book in order to get the people you interview to the point of talking about the stuff you are interested in. So you have to have like a lot of time and a lot of patience. Um, and then you know, you get for me, this is fun. Not everyone will think this is fun, but you get to do a really deep dive into all the books and articles and journals and videos and everything that come along with your book. And for me, that was super fun because I got to do, you know, a deep dive on YouTube and looking at 1970s airline commercials, um, which are amazing and really entertaining. And if you have a spare three hours, I totally recommend them. They're really mind-blowing. Um, and then you basically begin the process of like, you know, outlining, sifting. A lot of times you don't know the end of the story before you start. So you have to pay a lot of attention. You always have to be um thinking about the big picture as well as small picture, but at the same time, keeping your eye out for like those really juicy quotes or that you know are gonna go in there, or the details, the things you want to follow up on. And honestly, no detail too small. I think like the most interesting part of writing the book was learning about like the kind of glasses they put on the trays and why they called them rolly-polys. Um, I mean, that might not be too much of a mystery. It's because they rolled around a lot, but you know, just like different things like that. Um, what the bathrooms were like, what the uniforms were like, what kind of girdles they wore. Um, it's like it's just paying a lot of attention to the details and the big picture at the same time. Um, and again, this takes so much time and so much energy and is like essentially a full-time job for a couple of years. So I cannot emphasize enough that you should be really, really interested in your subject before you even contemplate the idea of writing a book about it because even if you love it, you'll probably be sick of it by the end.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

So you want to at least start out super interested. So, how did you get interested in this topic?

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Um, I think every journalist, especially especially every freelance journalist who is not actually employed anywhere, is always looking for book ideas, right? Um, you spend your life running around doing 15 different articles at a time, hustling, pitching, you know. Um, so the idea of just working on one thing for a couple of years is like utopian. Um, and so I tossed around tons of ideas over the years, you know, here and there, things that never quite stuck. And um, when I heard about this story and this sort of like underworld of airline history, um, it was about feminism, which I'm super interested in. It was about the labor movement, dido for that. And, you know, everybody loves a stewardess. I feel like stewardesses are kind of great hook to, you know, to bring people into stories of feminism and the labor movement because um that's part of their image, right? Like that's why these airlines got away with sort of using them as, you know, sales fodder for so long, is because everyone is kind of entranced by the idea of a stewardess.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

And you do a very, very good job of documenting everything that these women accomplished. Uh, and I want all of our listeners to go get this book and read it because it's fantastic. However, Nell, if you can tell us a little bit about those accomplishments and let's just go through it uh chronologically. So let's start in the 1960s and then go into the 1970s on all of the things that they advocated for and they were able to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Sure. Um, well, throughout the 60s, there are the striking down of those kind of the more barbaric of the working conditions, you know, the the marriage and the pregnancy rules and the getting fired at you know the age of 32 or or 35. Those are like the big battles. Um and you know, the story of the stewardesses is real and like, you know, knocking down these barriers, it's always one step forward, two steps back. Um, people are, I mean, it's very dramatic. You know, people are undermining them at every turn. The men they think are that are supporting them suddenly withdraw their support. People are coming out with these extraordinarily sexist statements that are really incredible. Um, in some of the trials and hearings they had about, you know, why the job should be open to men. People talked about, oh, like the airlines made the argument that the job was appropriate for women because women had natural maternal instincts and an interest in decor. That like that was why they, you know, they men shouldn't be allowed on board that they should keep the job only to these single women because women were interested in decor. Like the book is just full of these sort of extraordinary statements and things that people come up with. Um, so basically, through a combination of complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, hearings at the EEOC, and court cases, they managed to strike down these rules by the end of the 60s. Um, and then when the 70s come around, it's more about what we would consider smaller issues, things like the weight restrictions or you know, glasses, or you know, even just breaking down the race barrier. Um, up until up until like the mid-60s, there were almost no stewardesses of color. Like that was just being white was pretty, they didn't put it in the application, but they, you know, you could read between the lines. Like that was almost essential. Um, and I think one of the things that's most interesting is that sometimes the things they were fighting for, from our perspective, from an outside perspective, just they don't seem that important. Um, in 1976, they have this protracted battle, a huge battle over the stewardesses getting single rooms on layovers. Now, this was like, like I said, men came on board in the early 70s. And whenever, like, you know, they were flying from place to place, if they had a layover somewhere, an overnight layover, stewardesses always shared rooms. Like that was just the way it was. They, they, if there was an odd number, the most senior one would get her own room, but the junior ones were expected to share. So that you know, the crew would get off the plane, get on the shuttle bus, arrive at the hotel, and then the pilots, always male, would, you know, get their keys and saunter off to their own blissful solitude. The stewardesses always had debunked together. And so that was bad enough. But then when men came on board, you know, there wasn't usually more than one man per flight. So he would always get the single room. He always had his own room. He never had to share. And then even if you were a more senior stewardess, and this man, you know, had just started this job, you would have to share with the other woman, and and the man would get his own room. Um, so this like when we're talking about all the other things the stewardesses were facing, all the sexism, the ridiculous uniforms, getting, you know, harassed by the by the passengers, being portrayed as total sex objects in like ad after ad after ad, the single rooms thing just doesn't seem like that big a deal. Like it seems like there were bigger battles to fight, you know, over pay or pensions, or the fact that the ground crew all got more money than they did. Um, but you know, I think it's just interesting, it really illustrates how like the reality of working a job is so different from the outside perspective. And I think you can apply this to pretty much any industry. But this is one issue in which they were like, this is it, like we need to get single rooms. So they had contract negotiations with the company and they voted down their contract two times. Um, if you don't know much about labor negotiations, I do explain it in the book in what I was told was an entertaining way, and I hope that's true. But voting down a contract is a very big deal. Um, you know, and they basically staged their own like rebellion over the fact that they didn't get single rooms and they won. Um, so it was basic, but everything was about unifying the workers, the stewardesses working together and standing up for what they wanted, um, against, you know, the management, the company, these sort of um old white dudes who were basically like making all the decisions for them, um, even down to the the leaders of their union. So it really is, I mean, they had a lot of accomplishments, but the way they actually got things done, um, which is definitely still true today, is through the the power of numbers and just like sheer unity, um, which is always something that impressed me about them, you know, that they could pull that together.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Yes. The flight attendants are a force to be reckoned with. But once you're adopted into their family, they treat you like royalty.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

100%. Uh, don't mess with the flight attendants. I would absolutely say that. I mean, you you can even say, like, see that now. Like, there's currently a really big union drive going on at Delta. Um, and they're trying to bring there's a going to be a vote as these 24,000 flight attendants, like it's the second biggest airline in the US. And these 24,000 flight attendants are gonna vote on whether or not to join the association of flight attendants. So at Delta, they have never been unionized. Um, Delta is like a southern company, it has so-called family values. They're they're famous for union busting. And so they have this big vote going on right now. Um, and it's like it's tremendous. It's gonna be a huge like watershed moment for the labor movement if they join. Um, but I would just say, yeah, like they are the idea, I think, of the stewardess is sort of docile and amenable. And you can you can see this again in some of the ads in the book from the 70s, where it's like a lovely smiling young woman helps a tired businessman off of his coat, brings him a pillow, a cool drink, you know, treats him really like her child. Um, and that was the image that they, you know, they sold a lot of tickets with that image. Um, and then the reality is like that, you know, they're they're tough, it's a really hard job, and they are um hard workers and they're not pushovers. I'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

Michael, any uh closing questions?

SPEAKER_01 43:32

When I was reading your book, I noticed that there were a lot of, while it's very formal, there are also a lot of illustrations and pictures. And I think that makes the argument all the more powerful. What inspired you to add those ads and the pictures from the people that you interviewed, as opposed to just like explaining them?

SPEAKER_00 43:55

I think the photos, um, especially of you know, Pat and Tommy and Sonia, like the women that I interviewed. View in the book, you know, it really helps bring home the reality of it. You see them on the plane, you see them at their homes, like, you know, it really helps you connect with them in a way that, like, um, hopefully the writing does that too. But it's always nice, I think, to have a visual image. And when it comes to the ads, um, I mean, if I had had my way, I would have packed the book. Like 50% of the book would have been those ads in the 60s and 70s, because to me, they are like really jaw-dropping. Um, you know, there's one ad of like a woman in an American Airlines mini dress sitting on a chair, looking sort of like demure but also sexy at the camera. And the tagline reads, think of her as your mother. Um, and the implication is that like she's going to take such good care of you on the flight. That's why you should fly American Airlines, but it's also like very sexual. And then they have like Air Jamaica has these like ads of stewardesses in bikinis, and they're offering to serve you a drink, which I have never heard of, called a rum bamboozle, which I still haven't figured out what that is, but I'm curious. Um, but like sounds good. Why are the flight attendants in bikinis? You know, it's just like the ads, actually, I almost got in trouble on another podcast when I was sort of laughing about them and somebody called in and was like, why are you laughing? It's not funny. And like, of course, it's not funny, especially if you were, you know, working the airlines back then. But from the perspective of 2022, to look at these ads, like, I mean, they are funny, they're shocking and they're horrifying, but like they're and they're ridiculous. Like, they are just ridiculous. Um, you know, I mentioned the uniforms and and things like that. And I think the ads are just like, I don't know, there was one commercial, this isn't in the book, but um, of for Southwest Airlines, which, as I said, they had orange hot pants and lace up go-go boots. That was their uniform. And the commercial is just three long-legged stewardesses in this uniform walking across the tarmac to the plane. One of them turns back, looks at the camera, and said, Remember, before Southwest, you didn't have hostesses in hot pants. Remember? Like, that's the whole ad. It's just like it's just incredible. It's a really fascinating snapshot of history. And I think it also just adds some color to it, helps to sort of fill out the idea of like exactly how sexist the environment was. You know, it's easy to write that stuff down, but when you see the things that people were subjected to, it makes it a little more real. Um, and you know, sort of some light entertainment as well.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

And to compare it with with Pan Am, the Pan Am flight attendant uniforms were very conservative because they were flying all over the world in many different countries and different cultures. So, and same thing with TWA. I mean, both of their uniforms were very conservative and sophisticated and smart.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

That was absolutely the image that they were going for, those airlines, you know, sophistication, um, that everyone who worked there was like I see not have to speak these several languages, like there was absolutely like they were another level. And yes, accepting the TWA paper dresses, um the uniforms in general, yes, were much more uh I would say practical. And you know, almost a lot of them took their inspiration from the military, um, you know, like the same as the captain's uniform. Um, while the domestic airlines, in a way to sort of differentiate themselves from each other, um, you know, by the time they were making these, well, by the time my book, you know, the time period my book gets into the 60s and 70s, like the airlines were almost like everything was safe. They were all flying to the same destinations. There wasn't that much you could use to differentiate yourself from one airline to the next. And the target audience was, you know, traveling businessmen, which I think is probably still the target audience today. Um, and so the way that they chose to target those people were through their stewardesses. Um, first through ads that like talked about how that she'd take care of your every need and she would sort of mother you and pamper you, and then through these like very sexualized ads. Um I don't know, I think it's pretty it's pretty fascinating from that perspective. But yes, Pan Am and TWA were a little more um decorous, might be the word.

SPEAKER_02 48:19

Yeah, that's a good word for it. Um, and a lot of people don't realize, but the first and foremost uh mission of flight attendants is passenger safety. That comes first, everything else comes after that.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

100%. Um, and that is something that the flight attendants were fighting for. They were fighting to be licensed as safety professionals for decades before it finally happened, and that was only after 9-11. Um, and for precisely that reason, because people did not take them seriously. Um, they did it it didn't they didn't take them seriously as workers, you know, they were underpaid, their working conditions were awful, and passengers didn't take them seriously as safety professionals. Um, like I said, you know, if you're wearing these kind of ridiculous getups and these tiny uniforms and you can't even reach into the overhead compartment without like flashing the whole cabin, like it is very hard to get the passengers to take you seriously. And of course, that was done deliberately, but it also had the downside of like if they needed to, if there was an emergency on the plane, or you know, there was a spate of hijackings like um that took place in in the 70s, you need the passengers to listen to you and to take you seriously. And it was really hard for them to do. And that was something that a lot of the stewardesses in my book really talked up, like to the media with that group, Stewardesses for Women's Rights. Like they just tried to highlight that this kind of sexualization of stewardesses and treating them like, you know, flying Playboy bunnies was actually dangerous. Like it actually put the passengers in danger. And I think that was a pretty, a pretty effective message.

SPEAKER_02 49:56

Yeah, very compelling. There is uh a quote in your book uh from I believe it was a United executive talking about the age limit, and he said something along the lines of uh if one of our stewardesses is not married by 32, something must be wrong with her. And we take pride that our stewards stewardesses only last in their jobs for 10 months because they get married. And I was just like, wow.

SPEAKER_00 50:31

Well, I feel like that also had sort of to serve dual purposes, right? Like, first of all, it kept the workforce young and single, which was incredibly important to the airline's image. They wanted every passenger to get on the plane to think that this like these youthful stewardesses were available, um, and that you know, they're sort of the fantasy ideal that they were projecting. So it kept the workforce looking the way they wanted them to look and nobody was hitting, you know, the slowed-down metabolism of middle age or anything. Um, and also when you have when you fire people before they can really build up any kind of momentum or seniority, you know, they don't care about their pension. They don't care about their benefits because they know they're not gonna be in the job 10 years from now. Um, so if you join when you're like 23 and you know that like if you don't get married, then the longest you will stay in that job is 32. It's not worth it to like stand up to the company and fight for better working conditions because it's not a career, it's just a job. And you know it's gonna be over soon. And a lot of them, you know, they did get married within three years. That was most of them got married within three years, especially back in the 60s. So, you know, keeping the workforce, you know, young was also served that purpose of like you never had to pay them that much and you didn't have to negotiate with them over pension plans or anything like that, because they weren't gonna be around to collect those pensions.

SPEAKER_02 51:50

For some of our younger listeners, can you explain why these airlines were so focused on no marriage for their flight attendants? Because that's a concept that is very foreign to younger people today.

SPEAKER_00 52:09

Yeah, it takes a lot to wrap your mind around it. Um, one of the arguments the airlines would use against hiring married stewardesses, um, like when the stewardesses in my book would protest or hold a hearing or hold a trial about it, um, the airlines would say, no, we we can't hire married women because then you know the schedule is very irregular and it's not suitable to a wife and a mother who needs to be home all the time. They said actually that, oh, well, their husbands will call in and complain that they haven't seen their wives in a while. Like these were actual arguments that the airlines advanced against hiring married women or letting their employees get married. Um, so yeah, I think it goes back to keeping the workforce young and keeping this illusion of availability for these, you know, male business travelers who were like really the that was their bread and butter. And there weren't even that many women flying really um up and into the 70s. You know, it was really mostly men. And it was just part of their sales programming. It was part of their marketing, this idea that like, you know, these women were were there to only focus on you. They weren't thinking about their husbands at home, they were only concentrating on you. Um, and even, you know, at some points they would have to like bring some married women back to work for a little bit if they had a shortage or something like that, but they would make them take off their rings and they would always introduce them as miss, never as misses. So like they went really hard on maintaining this particular image.

SPEAKER_02 53:39

Crazy. Crazy. Can you share a couple stories of the battles that uh Pat and Tommy in your book uh went up against union leaders and politicians?

SPEAKER_00 53:53

Sure. Um this is something that kind of the second half of the book really leans into, which is you know, where does the power go? Um and if you have power, what do you do with it? So, like I said, at almost every airline except for Delta, um, stewardesses have always been unionized in the United States and they always belong to a union. But and the the ones in my book, as at American Airlines and with many other airlines, they were affiliated to the Transport Workers Union, which is like a huge union of bus drivers and subway drivers and you know, millions of people. Um and so those people would represent the stewardesses in negotiations and at the bargaining table. Um, they would negotiate their contracts for them. And they, while the stewardesses were union members, you know, they were not what people often think of when they think of union members. You think of like a burly white truck driver, maybe. You don't think of like a 22-year-old stewardess. Um, so they were represented by these, you know, teamsters or transport workers or or whomever. Um, and the things that those men were were fighting for at the at the at the negotiating table was not what the stewardesses wanted. Like the things that they were asking for were not the things that the stewardesses actually needed. Um, and they weren't really listening to them when the stewardesses said, you know, we want single rooms on layovers, or, you know, we want to be paid for our uh, I don't know, uniforms, you know, something like that. Like it was all focused on totally different things because essentially they thought they knew better. Um and so the story of the of the book is basically about how these stewardesses decided that they were no longer going to be dominated by, you know, these men who weren't really connected with them at all. Um, instead, they were going to like seize that power for themselves. Um, and the climax of the book is this huge vote and huge campaign to leave the Transport Workers Union to form the Association of Professional Flight Attends, um, which is this campaign is led by Pat Gibbs, one of my heroines. And basically they end up with this like independent woman-led union, and then they go to the bargaining table themselves and they negotiate with the company. Um but yeah, it's basically all about like how sometimes you can't wait around for people to give you power. You have to just reach out and take it for yourself, which I think is a good lesson that we could all learn.

SPEAKER_02 56:31

Michael, any uh closing questions?

SPEAKER_01 56:35

Nothing much, except for the fact that when I originally got my hands on the book, um I was really expecting it to be about the ills of sexism, especially in the 60s and 70s, but then when I actually started reading it, I found out it was really about the labor movement aspect of it. So when you originally got the idea to write a book about um stewardesses in the 60s and 70s, what is it about the um labor aspect or the sexism aspect or both?

SPEAKER_00 57:13

Uh definitely both. I'm really interested in both of those things. And to tell you the truth, the labor aspect was a complete surprise to me. Um I didn't know that stewardesses have been unionized like for decades and decades and decades. I didn't know that there were like tens of thousands of them were union members. Um, I didn't know that they had like made these changes in their own workplace and that the ramifications of those changes would go on to affect, you know, women like me. Um so it was really fascinating to me. And I think there's honestly like a through line to what's happening now, not just at Delta, as I mentioned earlier, but you know, Sarah Nelson, she's the current leader of the Association of Flight Attendants, um, representing like tens and tens of thousands of flight attendants. And she's kind of the new face of labor. You know, she's out there with Bernie Sanders doing campaigns, she's, you know, on the cover of Time magazine. She's just like incredibly powerful um union leader, and she's a flight attendant. You know, she was a flight attendant at United. So to me, to find out this whole kind of secret, untold history of flight attendants and the labor movement was just like fascinating and so interesting. And of course, I think like one of the reasons their story has been overlooked up to now is is sexism, of course. So it all connects, but I just think it's like it's such an interesting story, uh, such an untold story. And I just like the lesson I took away from it is that even if somebody makes you wear, you know, hot pants and a raccoon skin hat, like you can still get stuff done if you if you try hard enough.

SPEAKER_02 58:46

Any closing comments? No.

SPEAKER_00 58:50

Um, I think we covered a lot of stuff in this interview, which was great and it was really fun. Um, I would just say, yeah, um, I think the lessons in the book, um, the the battles that the stewardesses fought and the rights they won, and even the sort of tactics they use to get what they want, like you can see a lot of those still um being relevant today. And especially if we look at things like, you know, all these Starbucks that are unionizing now and Amazon warehouses and Chipotle, like it's a lot of it can be there's a real through line from what was happening in the 60s and 70s to what's happening on the ground right now. And I think, you know, it's it's good to remember these stories and to learn lessons from these stories and yes, to absolutely be entertained by these stories. So I all three of those things happen for me, and I hope they happen for other readers also.

SPEAKER_02 59:39

Excellent. The Great Stewardess Rebellion, how women launched a workplace revolution at 30,000 feet. You can find it in any bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and so forth. Nell, thank you very much for your time and thank you for coming on the program.

SPEAKER_00 59:57

Thank you so much to you both. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:15

That legacy lives on at the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York, where you can explore the rich history of the aircraft and individuals at the heart of the company known as the world's most experienced airline. For more information about the Pan Am Museum, check out our website at www.thepan Amuseum.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. As was once a tagline in one of our commercials, we would greatly appreciate your support to help the Pan Am Museum continue making the going great. You can also support the museum by shopping on our online store for all things Pan Am accessories, apparel, jewelry, books, models, and posters. We want to hear from you. If you have a question for us or want to share your story, our email address is podcast at the Pan Ammuseum.org. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan Am.