Sex and the Stewardess

Introduction

Perhaps the most compelling indication of the impact of technological advance in twentieth-century America is not the replacement of the horse by the automobile, of the bookkeeper by the computer, or of the church supper by the nude party. Much as these three changes seem to encompass societal change itself. I would submit that they are secondary to another replacement: that of the farmer’s daughter by the stewardess.

Because as surely as God made little green apples, salesmen made farmers’ daughters in half the unprinted jokes circulating in America a few decades ago. Whatever her role in fact, the farmer’s daughter was forever cast as the embodiment of what the American male hoped the American female might be — naïve and yet knowledgeable, young, unspoiled, and at once both horny and hygienic.

It is this role which the present-day airline hostess has largely taken over. She is every man’s dream mistress, pleasant and poised, neatly groomed and becomingly coiffed, cool under stress, always smiling, and — because she is booked on another flight tomorrow morning — as conveniently disposable as an air-sickness bag.

The myths which have grown up around the stewardess almost cancel one another out. She is a virgin, a nymphomaniac, a lesbian, the private property of the captain, a pro hooker, or what you will. She is (a) forbidden to date passengers, (b) encouraged to date VIP passengers, (c) anxious to get married or (d) none of the above. She is the girl next door. She is the furthest thing in the world from the girl next door. She can be had in the jump seat, the lavatory, the airport lounge, and Macy’s window. She does, she doesn’t, she will, she won’t, she likes it, she hates it. And so on.

The truth, of course, is a combination of all of this and a little more beside. The first observation we can make about stewardesses is an echo of Lincoln’s remark about the common man and Custer’s observation about Indians. God did make a lot of common men, and there sure were a lot of Indians there, and the same thing goes for stews. There are a whole lot of airplanes up there, a fact one appreciates keenly when stuck in a holding pattern over Kennedy for two hours. A whole lot of airplanes, and stewardesses on every last one of them.

Beyond this confirmation of the obvious, is there much truth in the overall myth? Is the stewardess more active sexually than the average girl? Is she as fast as the jet she flies in?

The answer is a highly qualified yes. To be sure, the average stew has more sexual contact with a larger number of shorter-term acquaintances than the average non-stew. But this in and of itself is hardly remarkable, for she is also on balance considerably more attractive, more outgoing, in contact with more men, exposed to more emotional stress, propositioned more frequently, away from home base more often, and in countless other respects more inclined to swing loose sexually.

In another sense, too, she embodies many of the qualities of the farmer’s daughter of a simpler day. Like that mythic young lady, like nurses and career girls and all those sundry categories the mention of which bring a wink to the Rotarian’s eye, the stew is a creature who has become what she is out of a certain amount of discontent with what she was. The most outstanding thing about the farmer’s daughter was that she damned well wanted to get off the farm and out where the action was. Similarly, the stewardess is a girl who has escaped the farm — or the small town, or the provincial city, or whatever environment she grew up in and ultimately came to regard as stifling. She had sufficient perception and sense of personal worth to want something more for herself than marriage to the boy next door, and she had the drive to break with a generally comfortable existence and strike out very much on her own.

Typically, the stew is a middle-class Midwestern girl who cannot buy the home-town version of the American dream but who, at the same time, is not in rebellion against basic middle-class home-town values. Her profession is the most specifically temporary career in existence. Most airlines retire stews automatically at thirty years of age, and most stews are grounded by marriage long before that desperate birthday. The stewardess enrolls in her profession with the certain foreknowledge that, after just a couple of years in the sky, she will either marry a passenger or return to the boy next door.

Her orientation, then, is toward the present rather than the future. And any number of features of her job reinforce this orientation. The constant change of scene, of companions — indeed, the whole mood of change, of going through life constantly resetting one’s watch to coincide with local time zones, all engenders a state of mind in which yesterday and tomorrow are less easily grasped and today is more significant. Then too, the implicit danger of air travel helps fix the stew’s attention upon the present moment. Despite the fact that airplanes are statistically safer than bicycles, despite the fact that crewing on commercial airliners is not really a high-risk occupation, the one thing that everyone certainly knows about planes is that, occasionally, they come down like snow.

This is a point on which no one cares to dwell. Most stews would rather talk about something else, and so would I. To all readers who picked up this volume to read on a plane, let me tender my apologies, and my assurance that I intend to mention this periodic propensity of heavier-than-air craft as little as possible. Still, it must be said that all stews do live with the constant knowledge that now and then something goes wrong, and most of them sooner or later know someone who has gone down with the ship. It should hardly come as a surprise that girls who live under this sort of Damocletian sword are not inclined to make a fetish of chastity.

Sex and the Stewardess indeed!

Researching this book, I must admit, was something of an embarrassment. One of the first things I learned was that I’m writing a book about stews and would like to interview you is as common an in-flight pitch as You ought to be in pitchurs. I found out, in fact, that it was generally easier to do things in reverse: to date a stew first and bring up the book later on. This is nice work if you can get it, and the sort of thing that makes me glad not only that I’m a writer but also that I write about human behavior rather than, say, farm machinery or data processing.

In the course of things, I became rather closely acquainted with a good number of remarkable young ladies. At the same time, I came to appreciate the impossibility of producing a book which can sum up the sexual nature of the airline stewardess. The average stew, like the average Anyone Else, does not exist. I met no average stews. I did meet any number of Individuals, and some of their stories are presented in the pages which follow.

Before I met these girls, I had a tendency to regard stews as plastic people, as fundamentally artificial as the potted plants in airport lounges. The permanent smile, the automatic friendly word — this sort of thing can be off-putting until one realizes that it is all essential to the efficient performance of a demanding and important job. I have not only gotten away from this original misconception entirely, but I have come to regard the stewardess with something very like devotion.

In a sense, I think the airline hostess is rather like Southern California in that she is the very quintessence of Now. I have felt for some time that how one feels about Southern California is a part of how one feels about the twentieth century; it is what the rest of the country, indeed the rest of the world, is trying mightily to become, and one cannot praise or condemn it without bearing this in mind.

Much the same may be said for the stew. She is American womanhood in microcosm, the liberated, with-it, involved girl of the present day. She has all of the best qualities of today; woman in abundance, and whatever attributes she shows which we might call flaws are qualities inherent in our culture.

The parallel could be extended too far, of course. All things being equal, I would much rather live with a stewardess than in Los Angeles. But I do not think any of us should rush to condemn the free ways of either.

The case histories which follow are those of specific individual girls whom it was my pleasure to interview. Their names and all other names have been deliberately changed. The names of their airlines have been omitted, and data concerning various cities and schedules and whatever has been either changed or deleted to such a point that no one should bother attempting to identify any of the persons involved. Such an undertaking would be witless and wholly unrealistic.

With this one reservation, the material which follows is presented as I received it, rendered largely in the words of the stews themselves, frequently in interview form.

To the stews who made this book possible, and indeed to all their fellows in the sky, this book is most respectfully and affectionately dedicated. May they all have happy landings forevermore.