Fly with Me
                         
Director: Sarah Colt/ Helen Ryan Dobrowski
Year: 2024
Rating: 7.0
A nearly 2-hour documentary about the history of flight attendants might sound like a nonsensically fluffy subject, but in fact it is quite interesting because their history to a large degree echoes the social changes that were taking place in America from the 1930s through the 1970s. Fighting for civil rights, gender rights and women's rights. It was a long road of pushing for their rights. Initially, when airlines began to carry passengers in the 1930s, they hired men for the job of tending to passengers. One woman went to the executives and said don't you think well-trained women would have a more calming effect on passengers and they agreed. Within a few years, all the flight attendants or stewardesses or hostesses were female. But only the pretty ones. Back in the 30s and 40s, being a flight attendant was one of the few jobs even available to women.  Back then it was high status for a woman to be one - glamorized in films and magazines. I guess it still is. I was in a restaurant last week and a crew of hostesses walked in with stylish uniforms and every eye in the place was on them.  Emirates, I think.

 


Women had to meet height and weight requirements, had to be pretty, graceful, sweet, patient and be safety experts. Once accepted they had to go through training in how to groom themselves, comport themselves, balance books on their heads - any infraction would get them released. They had to be single and had to quit at a specified age - usually in their early 30s. This age requirement not only kept them young but also stopped them from receiving pensions. All this was standard for years. And slowly at least in America this began to crumble as lawsuits were brought against airlines all the way up to the Supreme Court. A black woman had to sue to get a job and she was the first in 1960. Not only that, but black passengers were coded and segregated for years.



In the 1960s to the 70s, flight attendants began to be sexualized to attract customers - remember the Fly Me ads, the hotpants, the paper dresses? No? Before your time. Not mine. The film does not get into how shitty airline travel has become. Cattle cars. Crap food. It didn't used to be that way. As a child, I can recall international flights had silverware and pull-out beds to sleep in. Now if you fly an American airline, the chances are the flight attendants will be well over 30 but still wonderfully hospitable. Could be a man or a woman. I don't know how they do it with the shit-heels for passengers now. In Asia anyways, I think they still have many of the restrictions they once had in America - because most of them are stunning. When I fly, I take an Asian airline. Better in every way. It is a good documentary - maybe at 2-hours they stretch it too much, but it is well narrated with lots of ex-flight attendants telling their stories of breaking through racial and sexual barriers.