Flight Attendants

Flight attendants, or stewards / stewardesses, have a very praiseworthy job. And I am always amazed how efficient and good natured they do their work. Especially on these long distance flights in which they have to stay alert and energetic for 10 or more hours.

For years there has always been this magic ring to it. A nice, exiting, traveling to exotic places kind of connection in a lot of peoples minds when they think or talk about stewardesses. And there must have been a billion young girls that wanted to become a princess or (in case that could not work out) at least a stewardess. But is that still true nowadays I have started wondering. One reason is that I, and a lot of other people who also fly both US based as well as EU airlines, repeatedly observe that the nowadays American flight attendant is on average many many years older then her EU colleague and often, let's say, far from fashionable. Hence the joke of attaching a pic of a good looking lady in a sexy fantasy flight attendant uniform to my previous post. And to stress it a bit further (and running the risk of being called a male chauvenist pig for the rest of my life), EU flight attendants are on average much better looking and dresssed then their American counterparts. Now why is that?

I did a little bit of googling and one of my first hits was Ellen Simonetti. The photo at the top (which I 'stole' from the New York Times website) is her. She was a flight attendant at Delta. Now surely, this undermines my suggestions above that the stewardesses on US airlines are old(er) and not good looking. But there is something special with Mrs. Simonetti. Apperently she got fired for posting to liberal photo's of herself in her Delta uniform on her blog. To liberal? Nudes you mean? No. Nothing indecent. But if you like you might call them sexy.

I am not going to write about this case. Many others have commented on it and you only have to google her name to find it. She actually has beccome somekind of celebrity: there is even a Wikipedia entry on her. Look it up yourself or buy her book or check out her blog: Diary of a Flight Attendant. But what strikes and bothers me is the over the top reaction of her employer. Why would they do that? Was it realy that 'out of order' what she did? Damaging to the company? Is Delta run by conservative dinosaurs? Or is it the in the States omnipresent christian puritanism? I am afraid that it is mainly that.

Strange contrast is it not? The country which speaks so highly about the freedom of speach, of choice. Gives so much room to individuality. That has the biggest porn industry on the planet. Gives their kids at the age of 16 the right to operate a deadly dangerous tool: a car. Has perhaps the highest number of teenage pregnancies in the developed world, but at the same time prohibits their youngster from drinking even the weakest alcoholic beverage before the age of 21. All these aspects are substantially different in Europe while at least up to the late 1900s almost all the imigrants are of European origin. Not a contrast you would immediately suspect. Did we Europeans evolve further with our more liberal society or is the US ahead of us and soon christian conservatism will set the standards here as well?

Afterthought. At least now I understand why on the whole US cabin crew is not among the better looking ones: they fire the pretty ones!