{"id":17878,"date":"2009-12-12T16:18:02","date_gmt":"2009-12-12T21:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=17878"},"modified":"2017-09-16T19:16:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T00:16:25","slug":"think-of-her-as-your-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/12\/12\/think-of-her-as-your-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Think of Her as Your Mother&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rachel U. sent us a 1968 American Airlines ad (larger available at <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.modernmechanix.com\/2007\/06\/09\/american-airlines-ad-think-of-her-as-your-mother\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Modern Mechanix<\/a>):<\/p>\n<p>The text:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>She only wants what\u2019s best for you.<br \/>\nA cool drink. A good dinner. A soft pillow and a warm blanket.<br \/>\nThis is not just maternal instinct. It\u2019s the result of the longest<br \/>\nStewardess training in the industry.<br \/>\nTraining in service, not just a beauty course.<br \/>\nService, after all, is what makes professional travellers prefer American.<br \/>\nAnd makes new travellers want to keep on flying with us.<br \/>\nSo we see that every passenger gets the same professional treatment.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s the American Way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Rachel says,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Before I read the headline of the ad, my brain registered the woman as a typical &#8220;sexy stewardess&#8221; image that seems to be standard industry fare when air travel started booming:\u00a0 knees bent up toward the face, one hand touching her face&#8230;extremely focused gaze that seems a bit &#8220;come hither.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, that&#8217;s what the pose is. It&#8217;s just that being sexually attractive\u00a0doesn&#8217;t mean women weren&#8217;t also supposed to also take on a caretaking role. It&#8217;s one way we&#8217;ve constructed femininity over the years: women were supposed to be nurturing and supportive in a &#8220;maternal&#8221; way, while also sexually alluring enough to keep their men from wandering (because if he wandered, it was definitely their fault for not keeping him happy at home).<\/p>\n<p>Notice also the implicit denigration of stewardesses in general: at American Airlines they get <em>real<\/em> training, &#8220;not just a beauty course.&#8221; At first reading that could seem as though they were saying they emphasize skill, not physical attractiveness, but the image makes it clear you can look forward to getting both.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em>Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rachel U. sent us a 1968 American Airlines ad (larger available at Modern Mechanix): The text: She only wants what\u2019s best for you. A cool drink. A good dinner. A soft pillow and a warm blanket. This is not just maternal instinct. It\u2019s the result of the longest Stewardess training in the industry. Training in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2096,2100,23705,76],"class_list":["post-17878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-work","tag-vintage-stuff","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17878"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71186,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17878\/revisions\/71186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}