Considers flight attendants as cultural icons, looking at the history of the occupation and how attendants redeployed the "glamorization" used to sell air travel to campaign for professional respect, higher wages, and women's rights.

List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1. “Psychological Punch”: Nurse-Stewardesses in the 1930s 11
2. “Glamour Girls of the Air”: The Postwar Stewardess Mystique 36
3. “Labor’s Loveliest”: Postwar Union Struggles 60
4. “Nothing But an Airborne Waitress”: The Jet Age 96
5. “Do I Look Like an Old Bag?”: Glamour and Women’s Rights in the Mid-1960s 122
6. “You’re White, You’re Free and You’re 21-What Is It?”: Title VII 144
7. “Fly Me? Go Fly Yourself!”: Stewardess Liberation in the 1970s 174
Epilogue: After Title VII and Deregulation 211
Notes 223
Bibliography 271
Index 293

Kathleen M. Barry has a doctorate in history from New York University. She has taught American history at NYU and the University of Cambridge.