Ambassador of the air: the airline stewardess, glamour, and technology during the Cold War, 1945-1969

Abstract

Unrestricted During the postwar era, the airline stewardess reached her heyday as an icon of American womanhood. This complex icon was portrayed as more than a wife-in-training or a sex object; she was also represented as sophisticated, smart, independent career woman. And this airborne icon had international significance. As the post-Sputnik Soviet-American propaganda war intensified, the stewardess also served as increasingly important icon of national identity abroad in the global culture war. Deployed to glamorize technological achievements and to represent national identity overseas, stewardesses served as cultural ambassadors of rival empires -- they became front-line icons for the global culture war and representatives of ideal womanhood at home. In America, the stewardess represented a specifically American version of femininity, whichrelied on being heterosexual, white, middle-class, and consumer-oriented. Meanwhile, Aeroflot portrayed the Soviet stewardess as a worker and loyal Party member, rather than a glamorous wife-to-be. In the Soviet-American propaganda wars, stewardesses were used to represent competing models of womanhood and as a testament to the success of each nation's political system. Thus, this comparison between Soviet and American stewardesses reveals how competing representations of beauty and femininity related to broader political debates over communism and capitalism.; Ambassador of the Air explores the stewardess in terms of globalization, the Cold War, and consumerism. By placing the stewardess icon in the context of Cold War culture, this study shows how this profession produced possibilities for renegotiating conservative gender ideals in postwar America. The stewardess from 1945 to 1969 serves as a useful cultural lens for viewing multiple, contradictory forces that influenced changing gender roles in postwar America and offers fresh historical insight into the major gender transition in America from the dominant domestic ideals of the 1950s to the second-wave women's movement of the 1960s. Further, this study raises larger questions about the relationship between gender, beauty, and international politics.