Even though this post (I won’t tell you how I stumbled across it) is about how deregulation caused a change for the worse, as soon as I saw this, I knew this dude had to be a libertarian:
For an economist, the most fascinating aspect of Pan Am is the highly attractive flight attendants — or rather, stewardesses, since the show is set in the early 1960s. If you’re young enough, you might think that’s just TV. But I’m just old enough to remember flying in the 1970s, and I recall stewardesses who really were, in fact, hot. Okay, I was too young to understand the concept of “hot” — but I was definitely aware that I was being attended by some very pretty young women.
Not so anymore. Flight attendants aren’t necessarily unattractive now, but they’re no more fetching than people in any other service profession that doesn’t get tips. And what’s changed? In a word, deregulation.
Let’s skip the obvious things — Pan Am is a freaking tv show (you could could have the same thought experiment about Taco Bell employees), the guy’s actually basing an economic theory on a 40 year-old recollection of “very pretty young women”. Why the fuck are libertarians so blind to their own sublimely clueless sexism?
Maybe I should be a little more half-full about this whole thing and be thankful that very few non-glibertarians speak this way.
DFS
Neal Stephenson neatly described the phenomenon once. “It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe they are too smart to be sexists.”
You could say the same about a lot of gaps in the libertarian mindset. What you have here are people who sincerely believe that they are much too smart to be as fucking dumb as they actually are.
cleek
amazingly, this post is the top Google hit for “If that’s the way it must be, okay”. even beats links to the song it’s from.
Marc
You really should stay away from McMegan.
Even though her post on this subject is a rare example of good reasoning and good writing, she is still McMegan, sophist extraordinaire for those who have everything money can buy.
David in NY
Isn’t this just false? First, a lot of those “pretty girls” are now men — a result of anti-discrimination rules. Second, the disappearance of those girls is largely the result of the demise of former work rules under which the airlines fired stewardesses when they reached the age of 32 or got married. That second change had nothing to do with deregulation and is a long story, chronicled here.
Anyway, the author of that piece is a sexist know-nothing.
Rafer Janders
the guy’s actually basing an economic theory on 40 year-old recollection of “very pretty young women”.
To be fair, though, this was true: Pan Am really did, as a matter of corporate policy, hire only beautiful, glamorous young women. (Of which, ahem, my mother was one).
That said, the fact that this is no longer so may have far more to do with the fact that job and travel opportunities overall have broadened drastically for women since the 1960s as with deregulation. If you’re an ambitious, attractive woman these days, there are easier, more financially rewarding ways to have a career and travel than by becoming a flight attendant. It’s like the writer of the piece seems wilfully unaware of the feminist movement that took off right after the early 1960s.
arguingwithsignposts
as I mentioned in a comment last night, reality is a global conspiracy against libertarianism.
Mudge
The statement makes no sense. Certainly airlines were deregulated but there is no causation regarding stewardesses as a result. How many black stewardesses did he see? What happened were regulations regarding discrimination in hiring. Regulation, not deregulation caused it.
Roger Moore
I think he’s actually correct about the effect, but not about the cause. Airlines really did place a very heavy emphasis on looks when hiring stewardesses*. AFAIK, though, the thing that stopped it wasn’t deregulation but changing attitudes toward gender and sexism. An airline that included “must be good looking and will be dropped like a hot rock the moment they let their appearance slip” to their list of qualifications for flight attendants today would be (rightly) sued into oblivion.
*Just for random kicks, “stewardesses” is the longest common English word that can be typed with one hand using standard touch typing on a QWERTY keyboard.
slag
Isn’t it a little early to be instigating this type of thread, DougJ? We all know that men (especially white men) are the best arbiters of what is sexist and what is not.
GenenJockey
The comments are interesting as he tries to defend 40 year old memories (“Flight attendants were still hot into the mid 70s”) against facts like Braniff losing a landmark anti-discrimination case in 1965.
Typical Libertarian, though – never lets facts get in the way of his story.
BGinCHI
Because they are dicks.
And because they never grew up.
So, ipso facto, they are little dicks.
soonergrunt
@Mudge: Nobody who knows anything at all about economics, history, government, trade, literally dozens of other fields, ever thought that libertarianism actually has anything useful to guide national policy. Or, if you will:
Shorter soonergrunt:
@arguingwithsignposts: this.
WereBear
My aunt was one of those who got the heckoffthefarm by being an airline stewardess. If her upbringing or personality had been a bit different, she might have been a Playboy Bunny.
Nurse, teacher, secretary… did not offer glamor and travel along with the drudgery and endless smiling. Such was the career paths of the time.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Going by the my dad the jet mechanics – why are stewardess getting older and less hotter; the Stewdaress Unions won’t let the Airlines Execs fire stewardess when they get over age 30. As it is stewardess have to starve themselves because they can get canned in a NOT sexists way if their body weight gets to much. Also, this is 2012, not 1960 were being a stewardess was a good job for a woman.
Next the glibertarians will be asking why rail road porters aren’t young and intelligent blacks like they were in their grandparent’s day.
Lysana
@slag: White men know everything. We women and those racial minorities just have to be quiet and listen when they speak, agree with everything they say, and it’ll be all better!
John
Umm…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooters_Air
Samara Morgan
ALL libertarians and conservatives are constantly on an endless snipe hunt for some scraps of validation of their pervy notions of culture.
Witness Libertarian EDK and Conservative Razib Khan slobbering over Game of Thrones when George R.R. unequivocably thought libertarians and conservatives were of the devil.
An Idiot
> For an economist, the most fascinating aspect of Pan Am is the highly attractive flight attendants
He’s actually confusing “an economist” with “Tom Friedman”. What a loser.
Joel
All I can say is…
“WOLVERINES!!!!”
Calming Influence
Maybe Glen Whitman should ask the passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 who survived an ice-cold dip in the Hudson whether they give a shit that the flight attendants who got them all out safely were not necessarily “HOT”.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, what is with Libertarians and LOTR style fantasy stories? GoT is nothing but a record of civil war, mass backstabbing, paranoia and the social chaos that follows. How is that glibertirain paradise unless they think Mogadishu is the way to go.
chopper
@Roger Moore:
what’s the longest sentence? i offer up “as a war waged, stewart ward, a cad, wedded sad ex stewardesses as a vast fart was cast”
Bill E Pilgrim
@Rafer Janders:
Someone in his comments section mentioned the expanding opportunities for women playing a part, which he refutes by saying that since opportunities for all women increased, how would this explain only the “attractive” women disappearing from Pan Am so quickly? Unless you could show that attractive women’s opportunities increased “improved more rapidly than other women’s”.
What they’re both missing, in addition to the discrimination lawsuits, is that airlines started hiring stewards as well, which in fact were what the first airlines used long before, and that more women working also meant more women flying, thus “attractive” females for men to flirt with and drool over wasn’t going to work quite as well.
You know, I remember very clearly when libertarians were somewhat intelligent, whatever happened to those days? Were there lawsuits? Did they start hiring less intelligent ones? Did the job opportunities become so plentiful because the Galtian corporate masters pumped nearly unlimited funds into think tanks and propaganda outlets so that anyone with a wing, a prayer, and a broken calculator can have a job if they promise to say the right things? (Bingo)
David in NY
Dammit — it didn’t have a single thing to do with deregulation!
It happened because of anti-discrimination rules, and union agreements, that overturned company policies requiring that flight attendants be female, unmarried, and under the age of 32 (or 35). This all happened well before deregulation.
See: http://femininityinflight.com/activism.html
Southern Beale
Back in the “good old days” flight attendants had gender, age and weight restrictions. You couldn’t be male, you couldn’t be too old or too fat, and I think in the verrry early days they also had to be unmarried. You could be fired for gaining 15 pounds.
That changed as women demanded equality in the workplace, flight attendants got unionized, males entered the field, etc.
So quite possibly this person is accurately remembering “hot” flight attendants but of course that doesn’t mean the airline policies weren’t sexist. They were horribly sexist.
We have unions to thank for changing that, I believe. But of course, only a fucking hippie would point that out.
Southern Beale
@Samara Morgan:
Libertarians, like all conservatives, are desperately seeking cultural relevance. They have none.
Bulworth
so airlines were deregulated and we got less hot stewardesses? wouldn’t that be, ahem, a negative aspect of deregulation? or were things deregulated when we had super hot stewardnesses and now we have regulation and not so super hot stewardesses?
Samara Morgan
@Southern Beale: copacetic.
Julie Raffety
@werebear Add bookkeeper to jobs women could do. My divorced mother in the 50’s was a bookkeeper. I remember her telling us once that the man she shared the office with earned more than her even though they did the same job, but he had a family to support. Her four children that she supported were sitting at the kitchen table at the time. I was about 9 or ten, but I’ve never forgotten how unfair it was.
greylocks
Airline rules about hiring and retaining flight attendants were altered as the result of a series of law suits and union actions. Strictly speaking, that’s not “regulation” in the sense that the FAA issued a set of Federal Air Regulations (FARs) on the matter, but it certainly isn’t the result of “deregulation” either.
Deregulation of the airline industry only involved fares and routes. It had nothing to do with personnel policies, which were never regulated in the first place beyond setting licensing and certification minimums.
The airline industry remains one of the most heavily regulated of all industries. If anything, it is more regulated now than it was, as numerous FARs, federal and state laws, and other regulatory actions have imposed stricter operational, safety and reporting standards in a number of areas.
Chris T.
@Roger Moore: Well, that depends on one’s definition of “common”. Here are all the words that are 11 characters or more, from an old word list that does not always include past tense, plural, etc:
Obviously words like “tesseradecade” are not very common, but “reverberate” is not particularly rare, and when made into a present or past tense verb (reverberates, reverberated), is just as long as “stewardesses”.
(commands to obtain word list: “egrep ‘^[qwertasdfgzxcvb]+$’ /usr/share/dict/web2 | awk ‘length($1) > 10 { print }'”)
ChrisNYC
Does he have any explanation for the appalling level of not attractiveness among econ profs?
dave
They put pretty people on TV, who knew.
Roger Moore
@chopper:
That doesn’t work because the comma is normally typed with the right hand, not the left. If you actually want to do proper touch typing and punctuate properly, you’ll probably have to use your right hand. Otherwise you won’t be able to end the sentence with a punctuation mark, since both “?” and “!” require both pinkies and “.” is typed with the right ring finger.
Samara Morgan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: its not just LoTR fantasies. Conservativism has been disenfranchised from American contemporary culture.
What happens next?
Youth rejects conservatism like a disease.
After that?
A tribe without reps cannot survive.
MikeJ
The Ask the Pilot guy at Salon pointed out that the NY-Paris flight that is the centerpiece of the Pan Am TV show, in addition to happening 4 years before the show is set, was crewed by the most senior people in the airline. The captain wasn’t a young swinger, he was a vp for the airline that gave up his desk job to go back to flying the most glamorous route. The FAs were the most senior (read: oldest) in the entire airline.
Mnemosyne
@David in NY:
I think all of you guys are missing his point: those anti-discrimination laws are the “regulations” he’s complaining about. If we just let companies openly discriminate in hiring, he’d still have eye candy to look at when he flies, which is far more important than a person’s ability to get a job without arbitrary appearance, age and gender restrictions.
Bloix
David in NY has correctly explained twice now that deregulation had nothing to do with it. And what do we get? Comments like #26, which assumes that deregulation was the cause. It’s like pissing into the wind around here.
PS- the thing that’s really great about the Glen Whitman link is that he has no evidence and doesn’t feel the need for any. He has a theoretical explanation for an observed phenomenon, and because it’s in his head, it must be true. No connection to the real world is necessary or desirable.
different-church-lady
And that’s pretty much why I shudder whenever bloggers celebrate the death of newspapers.
Roger Moore
@Southern Beale:
Only a DFH would point it out using the work “thank”. A sexist glibertarian (but I repeat myself) might say the same thing but with “blame” instead.
fasteddie9318
Airline deregulation may have cost this guy his sexy stews (not really, but let’s go with it), but at least in return it’s brought us lower ticket prices, bullshit baggage fees, overcrowded cabins, oversold flights, unmaintained planes, untrained flight crews, underpaid and overworked pilots, and, um, freedom.
ChrisNYC
@Bloix: On the no evidence point, what is it with libertarians that they SAY they love rationality and numbers and proof but then it’s all, “Let me sit back and think of my experience and then extrapolate.” No need for silly evidence — they just throw in ‘it seems to me’ and write whatever the hell conclusions they want.
WereBear
@Julie Raffety: It was not meant to be an exhaustive list; but I am happy to say the ’50’s amaze me now. In an appalled, “dear heavens I was saved from some things” kind of way.
Bloix
No, #36 Mnemosyne, you are utterly, completely incorrect. That’s not what he’s arguing. He’s making a conventional “economic” theoretical argument – when corporations are not permitted to compete on price, they’ll compete on amenities – which is often true! Even as to “hot stews”! (Anyone here old enough to remember “we’ll really move our tails for you!”?)
Just that in this case, not.
Marci Kiser
So… flight attendants no longer look like Christina Ricci because we de-regulated all the Christina Ricciness right out of the airline industry?
So confused…
GeneJockey
@Mnemosyne:
Actually, it’s not clear that IS his complaint. He’s going to great lengths in the comments to defend his assertion that flight attendants didn’t become merely attractive until after the late 70s.
His point, like his thinking, is terribly muddled – nostalgia for beautiful stweardesses, but claiming that their disappearance is an acceptable consequence of the Wonders of Deregulation,
which also brings the tiny, legroom-free seat and the $25 per checked bag charge.soonergrunt
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
You do realize that was a self-answering question, right?
David in NY
@Mnemosyne:
Sorry, but I don’t think you’re right that he understands what happened and is complaining about anti-disc. law as “regulations.” That’s nowhere in his argument.
First, he plainly blames the change on deregulation at the end of the quote in the post. Second, he adds this totally absurd and historically inaccurate explanation of what happened:
That can only have been written by someone totally ignorant of this country’s history and more enamored of the theories in his head applying his misunderstanding of Economics 101. To wit, a libertarian.
jayackroyd
The point to observe here is that libertarians derive their philosophy, and understanding of economics and policy, from works of fiction.
Chris T.
@Roger Moore: If you want long right-hand words, there are far fewer:
Eyeballing the word list (without the awk for length), there are few verbs as well. There’s “kink” and “limp”, “boil” and “lump”. For pronouns, we have “I” and “you”. So perhaps “I limp uphill” and sentences of that sort. :-)
Zifnab
I remember the heady days of my youth, when the servant class was young and nubile and ripe for the molesting. Now, with the demise of airline price controls, I’ve noticed that prices have dropped and flight attendants have grown progressively more uppity and hideous to look upon. What’s up with that?
Also, hurray deregulation!
JPK
@Roger Moore: Thank you. I have wondered about the left hand ever since reading somewhere that it is “lollipop” for the right hand. Can anyone confirm this pressing question?
ETA: Chris T. ahead of me, I see.
Samara Morgan
@jayackroyd: no, they derive their philosophy entirely from Dead White Guys, and search endlessly in vain for scraps of validation in literature, science, and the arts.
shortstop
All of this rang a nasty old bell from my ute.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
You should actually read the article before making that kind of criticism. His point is that pre-deregulation airlines were forced to charge uniform rates for tickets, so they couldn’t compete on prices. Instead, they competed on various kinds of quality, like gourmet food, attractive stewardesses, swanky waiting areas, etc. Once deregulation let them compete on price, all the nice extras started to disappear because people cared more about cheap tickets than fancy meals or pretty stewardesses. He may not be correct in the specific case of attractive flight attendants, but I’m pretty sure he is correct about all the other extras. I’ve certainly heard the same argument made for the disappearance of decent airline food.
ChrisNYC
Whitman works at Cal *State.* What a moocher.
geg6
@BGinCHI:
This.
Heh.
Moonbatting Average
@DFS: I cannot believe how long it took me to read Snow Crash, but I started it a couple nights ago, and IT’S AWESOME.
jayackroyd
@Chris T.:
LOL.
I think you should change your handle to Randy Waterhouse.
Norwonk
Libertarianism is the luxury item of ideologies. You need to be a white male who has never experienced poverty or hardship to indulge in it.
David in NY
@Bloix:
Thank you, and I couldn’t agree more. You’d think people here would be happy to mark one of the real successes of unionization and anti-discrimination legislation, one that expanded the availability of good jobs, with good pay, to a class beyond young (under 32), unmarried women, and allowed women already hired to stay employed as they became older and had children. But I guess not.
jayackroyd
@Samara Morgan:
Sexist!!! You’re marginalizing Ayn Rand–who is, literally, the source for Andrea Mitchell’s husband’s understanding of governance and economics.
Yes, she wrote fiction. It’s like having the head of the EPA cite Daniel Quinn.(Whose polemical work I like, but it’s not science. It’s fiction.)
Felanius Kootea
OT: Former billionaire Raj Rajaratnam of the Galleon group sentenced to 11 years in jail for insider trading. His co-conspirators were also Wharton grads. Not that this will change the way any business school teaches ethics.
Satanicpanic
Am I the only person who tips my flight attendants when they bring me a drink?
Svensker
@MikeJ:
Seriously? Are you saying TV shows take liberties with the troof? Gol’durnnit, that’s disappointin’.
Calouste
@Bill E Pilgrim:
You got smarter. Libertardians are still as stupid and divorced from reality as they have ever been.
eyelessgame
Wait – we’re talking about hot stewardesses and someone brings up that the word can be typed with one hand – and no one makes the obvious joke? Well let me, by implication, repair that deficiency.
Linnaeus
@ChrisNYC:
These guys see themselves as modern-day Platos: let’s just discuss ideal forms of what the Great Libertarian Society would be!
norbizness
I too can’t believe that this self-marginalizing group of loonies we shouldn’t pay attention to constantly say things we don’t agree with and should therefore pay attention to!
The Moar You Know
Deregulation absolutely destroyed the airlines. Ask any pilot who worked before deregulation how awesome the airline trade was afterwards.
As for the hot stewardesses, it’s true. A lot of them were babes pre-deregulation. But this idiot is mistaking cause and effect – a lot of anti-discrimination laws came down the pike at the same time as deregulation, and that’s why flight attendants look like everyone else does these days.
Rafer Janders
@MikeJ:
The young idiots they have playing the pilots on the show are my biggest complaint. Pan Am captains at the time (1963) were for the most part WWII or, at worst, Korean War veterans, so would have been in their late 30s to mid-50s. But the guys on the show are all pretty young boys in their 20s, so much, much too young.
Put it another way, the pilots were Roger Sterlings and Don Drapers, but ABC cast Smitty.
That, and the hair on the main pilot character is way too long for his era and job.
Bill E Pilgrim
@MikeJ: That’s a great column, I never miss it.
FlipYrWhig
@chopper: Impressive. The story continues:
After a fracas, few waverers reversed; reserved Warcrafters, detested retards, caved; dazed, stewardesses reacted, waxed, screwed faster, redressed, sadder; Stewart Drew, drafted, rewatered vast crawdad acreages.
OK, the semicolons are cheating.
Skippy-san
At least in Pan Am days, you had hot looking stewardesses and decent customer service, not like today, where you get nickeled and dimmed for everything and there aren’t even any free drinks to console yourself with.
At leastbAsian carriers still understand that the service component and a good looking person providing them are an important part of building customer loyalty. Guess that makes a bit sexist- I’m ok with it if gets me free drinks on long haul flights to Hong Kong.
Woodrowfan
@Julie Raffety:
When I try to explain this rational to my students they look at me as if I was claiming that I once met a real Martian.
Roger Moore
@Chris T.:
Also “kill”, “join”, “mill”, “pull”, “limn”, and “jimmy”. You can talk about opinion, too. And the list of pronouns is decent, including not just “I” but “him” and “you”.
gbear
Points to Doug for not going with the title “You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Waitress In The Sky”.
David in NY
To Bloix and ChrisNYC and Linnaeus and anybody else who thinks the absence of evidence for his view should have ended this thread early on, without much more discussion. Belle Waring, in her famous post expounding the “and a pony” strategy, also set out the best description of the libertarian “thought” process:
“Reason recently published a debate held at its 35th anniversary banquet. The flavor of this discussion is indescribable. …
“Allow me to summarize.
“Richard A. Epstein: even in the libertarian utopia, some forms of state coercion will be required. If we must assemble 100 plots of land to build a railway which will benefit all, and only 99 owners will sell, then we may need to force a lone holdout to accept a fair price for his land. Similarly, the public enforcement of private rights and the creation of infrastructure will require money, so there will have to be some taxes. [Note to self: no shit, Sherlock.]
“Randy Barnett: Not so fast! Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it rather than restricting liberty in advance. We’ll know a lot more about human liberty in the libertarian utopia, and private entrepreneurs will solve these problems somehow without our needing to grant to governments the dangerous ability to confiscate our property in the name of some nebulous “public good.” And as for rights enforcement — look it’s Halley’s Comet!
“David Friedman: Epstein places too much confidence in his proposed restrictions on government power. Rights could be enforced privately, and imperfect but workable solutions to the holdouts in the railway case could also be found. ‘To justify taxation we need the additional assumption that rights enforcement cannot be done by the state at a profit, despite historical examples of societies where the right to enforce the law and collect the resulting fines was a marketable asset.’
“Now, everyone close your eyes and try to imagine a private, profit-making rights-enforcement organization which does not resemble the mafia, a street gang, those pesky fire-fighters/arsonists/looters who used to provide such “services” in old New York and Tokyo, medieval tax-farmers, or a Lendu militia. …”
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/03/if_wishes_were_.html
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
while i barely remember flying in the last days of regulation, i am old enough to remember drinking with women, a decade or so later, who were in flight attendant school(fake id, ftw) and stressing about a fingernail exam they had coming up.
in other words, they had to maintain their nails in just such a manner, and be able to do so without a nail salon. this was but one of the myriad of absurd details to being a flight attendant. i am guessing, that such hardassery was anachronistic even then.
i don’t think it was ever economics that drove the sort of minute detailing of flight attendant responsibilities. i also don’t think its the male libido that drives fingernail specs to the 1/8th of an inch beyond finger length guidelines, no chips, no cracks, etc.
the glibertarian sensibility, to be fair, is blonde hair, big boobs, and a laissez-faire attitude towards any other aspect, mental, emotional, or physical.
FlipYrWhig
@gbear: Very mean-spirited song, and not the ‘Mats’ finest moment, but definitely apropos here…
pragmatism
how a glibertarian views OWS v. teatards: its totes mcgoats the evil lamestream media’s fault.
“Tim Cavanaugh is certainly correct when he writes that “the media’s open-minded curiosity toward the Occupy movement stands in sharp relief to their dismissal of the Tea Party as a mob of racist religious fanatics.” The contrast has further convinced me of the liberal bias in the media, as if I needed any more convincing.”
El Cid
I really never did give a shit what the flight attendants looked like.
What seats I had, how much room, the temperature of the plane, food, luggage space, delays, etc.
That I gave a shit about.
Whether flight attendants were cuter in my opinion in this or that flight?
I have no recollection.
If the flight was delayed or hot or whatever, or when I got better or more polite treatment overall?
That I’ve remembered.
Bill E Pilgrim
@FlipYrWhig: That’s not bad. What did it sound like as you typed?
FlipYrWhig
@pragmatism: “Dismissal of the Tea Party”? What unregulated substance is he smoking? The media made that miscellaneous pack of thoughtless dumbfucks the lead story for months, and even now regularly has them on to provide “expert” analysis.
David in NY
@The Moar You Know:
Actually, before deregulation, says Wikipedia and another link I posted above but nobody reads. Wiki’s short summary: “In the 1970s the group Stewardesses for Women’s Rights protested sexist advertising and company discrimination, and brought many cases to court. The age restriction was eliminated in 1970.[17] The no-marriage rule was eliminated throughout the US airline industry by the 1980s.[18]”
kc
You’ve been reading Sullivan again, haven’t you? God damn it!
pragmatism
@FlipYrWhig: i have no fucking idea. it seemed like whenever there was more than one person in a place that had a tri-corner hat on, the media was obligated to cover it.
eyelessgame
It is almost as cool that ‘fact’ can by typed with only the left hand, while ‘opinion’ can be typed only with the right, as it is that on an automatic transmission ‘D’ goes forwards and ‘R’ goes backwards.
El Cid
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: The days of the first regular civilian luxury flights were made analogous to luxury sea voyages, which in the finest imperial tradition had a likewise obsessive focus on the exact correctness of every detail of sartorial, hygienic, and comportment standards.
It’s a heterosexist version of the absolutely obsessive attention to physical and behavioral and uniform perfection among higher ranking military officers and more prestigious military units — just without the option to pursue career specialties and complex tasks and a potential career path.
kc
Shorter Glen Whitman: “If it weren’t for deregulation, you ugly broads wouldn’t have jobs!”
Mark S.
@kc:
We really need to stage an intervention.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@El Cid:
and while that may be heterosexist, its certainly not a standard maintained on the whims of heterosexual males.
FlipYrWhig
@Bill E Pilgrim: It sounded like a guy trying to write vaguely dystopian fiction without the word “and.”
“A waste. War-farce freezes a crew,” a terse Ward festered. Drew strafed cars, West deserted, Baxter faded, dead.
Culture of Truth
I think I’ll skip reading this piece so I can join in the fight over whether this guy is a idiot or a moron, tempting though it is.
Silver Owl
LOL! The guy is complaining because a company does not conduct business with the goal of getting his penis hard as possible.
Mayur
I found the guy’s picture:
studman69
Bill E Pilgrim
@El Cid:
Not that what you wrote is wrong, depending on how you define “the first regular luxury flights” but everyone’s initial ideal for the role was actually male stewards, based on tradition in other transport.
Bill E Pilgrim
@FlipYrWhig: I meant it in the Zen sense. Possibly too Zen, in the sense of obscure and not very funny. I shall now commit seppuku, but also, not.
Shinobi
Great response from Think Progress http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2011/10/13/343273/are-we-seriously-discussing-why-pan-am-flight-attendants-are-hotter-than-regular-flight-attendants/
FlipYrWhig
@Bill E Pilgrim: Oh, I wish I had gotten that… it’s good. Remember the take on that conundrum on The Simpsons? Bart simply hits his palm with his fingers.
FlipYrWhig
@Bill E Pilgrim: Also, left-handed news headlines! Timely, too!
Tester Deserts, Draws Reward
gene108
@David in NY:
Flight attendants, all female at the time, launched the first lawsuit under the newly signed 1964 Civil Rights act, which eventually ended up succeeding and getting rid of the sexist rules that governed their industry.
This Glen guy is so damn wrong about everything in his BS piece.
rikryah
the delusion of the world of Mad Men
flukebucket
Loved this comment from the link
Bill E Pilgrim
@FlipYrWhig: Oh no I missed that. I was going to say that you were the first person to actually answer a “what is the sound of one hand ___ing?” question, but apparently you were the second.
muddy
@Woodrowfan:
You don’t have to hearken back to the 50’s for that “man with a family” stuff. I used to work as a draftsman and I got this BS in the 80’s & 90’s.
I’d been told in HS, late 70’s, that I only wanted to take drafting “to meet boys”, like there were no boys in Math or English, or for that matter half dressed in gym class. They told me to take Home Ec. I said I already knew how to cook and sew. I got in the class because I said my parents would sue. Not that they would have, making a scene oh noes!
So through the 80’s and 90’s I was working as a draftsman, often as the chief draftsman, and still I had guys say I was taking a job away from a man who needed to support his family. I’m not sure who was supposed to support *my* family in that case, my bad for not having a husband, just a child.
In my last job drafting the boss insisted I had to answer the phone when the receptionist was out, because if a man answered the phone people would think we didn’t have any real work to do. Meanwhile he was upset that they drawings were not done because he made me sit in the front all day. It was all my fault. He said that he was glad to hire a woman because men got ambitious and wanted to go out in the field, but women were not ambitious. I said I was not particularly ambitious, but now he had said that I wanted his job. He thought it was tremendous fun to bring all the upper level engineers in to his office and say that I had accused them of sexual harassment, when I hadn’t at all, I asked could I move the drafting tables around. I said his “little joke” was the only harassment there.
This was in 1992! A veritable lifetime ago. It was total harrassment, even though not of the butt-patting kind. But how can you sue when you need the work, To Support Your Family!
Quaker in a Basement
Would somebody tell the dude that Austin Powers was NOT a documentary?
Liberty60
@Roger Moore:
I realy don’t want to know how you discovered this.
Pat
Hey, I actually studied this case during grad school. I hate to be that guy chiming in, but the post linked actually has it right. Prior to the deregulation of the airlines in the late 1970s, federal law granted airlines local and regional monopolies (so, say, only United could fly between San Francisco and LA) and established price floors over the market-clearing price that a competitive market would have reached.
By these federal rules, they couldn’t compete on price. So how did they compete? On services. Who had the best meals, the most free drinks, and, yes, probably there was something to the “who’s got the prettiest stewardesses” explanation, it being of that era.
For what it’s worth, the point is still completely stupid, but for different reasons than you note. Namely:
1) After deregulation, airlines still had the option of offering (and passengers of buying) these services at the old, high fares. It’s just that they also had the option of cheaper flights with fewer perks. And the market unanimously chose cheaper, simpler flights. Anyone touting the magic of the free market, one would think, would notice that the bygone era was characterized by firms offering consumers a good that they didn’t want.
2) The most three important people in the push to deregulate the airlines are about the most notorious big-gummint liberals of the modern era: Steve Breyer, Ted Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter. (Breyer was Kennedy’s aide on the labor committee at the time.) They did it because regulation was making air travel too expensive for ordinary Americans, and lo-and-behold afterward it became affordable for middle class Americans to fly. (Contrast that with the deregulation schemes in more recent years, which nearly all serve only the policy goal of letting rich people get richer, often at the expense of those same middle class Americans.) Right wingers use this episode to paint liberals and Democrats as big-government nanny-staters who will make everything worse for consumers, when in reality it goes precisely to the opposite point.
pete
I remember those old days, and I remember that the women working as stewardesses were (a) innately attractive and (b) forced to wear the most god-awful make-up and costumes. Not my style at all, then or now, but they were clearly meant to fit the fantasy of some middle-aged businessman — not far off Bunnies & Hooters, actually.
Those were also the days when a women could build up her credit by working, get married, get fired, and watch her credit rating wander off into the sunset with her ex.
g
“For an economist the most fascinating aspect” of a once-powerful international airline is the appearance of its employees?
Oh, that must explain why our economy is in such a mess – the economists are busy thinking about t & a.
McArghlebargle alsomisses the point here:
Stewardesses used to be subject to all sorts of extremely strict rules: they couldn’t be married, couldn’t gain weight, couldn’t get pregnant, couldn’t be much over 30. If you fire everyone who violates those rules, then yes, you will select for a much “hotter” group of women than the current crop.
It wasn’t just stewardesses who were subject to this kind of discrimination. In the 50’s and 60’s in pretty much any occupation, from teacher to secretary, women were discriminated against for marriage and parent status, and appearance. The airline industry’s discrimination wasn’t unique the airline industry – they were simply mirroring the sexism that prevailed throughout the workplace.
Bonus quote: “as much as male customers might have enjoyed the eye candy.”
Has he bothered to think a minute about changing demographics in the customer base? Air travel is no longer dominated by male customers, thus customers needs, expectations and tastes are different.
That is, if one were to actually believe his fantasy version of history.
Jim C.
Has anyone mentioned those incredibly sexist old commercials that featured extremely attractive women asking customers to, quote, “Come fly me!”
catclub
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: “i am guessing, that such hardassery was anachronistic even then.”
IBM salesmen had similar fingernail inspections, so I understand. (and I am pretty sure they were mostly men.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@soonergrunt:
It seems logical, but do libertarians really think EVE On Line is the kind world they want to live in? I know they are damn fools to think some war lord is going to have any use for some narcissistic physically incompetent computer, geek who can’t keep his mouth shut.
A Farmer
I flew Delta last year, and during our layover in Detroit, I noticed a number of very attractive stewardesses. Of course, on our flight to Dayton, we had a very old man flight attendant.
lefthanded spiral
@Liberty60: “I realy don’t want to know how you discovered this.”
given that you can also find, ass, wet, sexy and breasts with the left hand on a typewriter, along with stewardesses,
I have no idea.
Roger Moore
@Liberty60:
It’s very boring. I got wrote a short Perl script to find the longest words that could be typed one handed, and stewardesses tied for the longest on the left hand list. I don’t remember what prompted me to look, but given that it was at work I’m fairly sure it didn’t have anything to do with pr0n.
FormerSwingVoter
@ChrisNYC:
In fairness, I think that most people are like this. Liberals get into the habit of finding support for their beliefs because people involved with or interested in politics sneer at you if you dare suggest that human suffering is a bad thing.
Nutella
@catclub:
Yes, and IBM salesmen (not all men, but the vast majority were men) were required to wear dark suits, white shirts, black shoes, and drive American cars. Lou Gerstner, who took over as CEO in 1993, stunned everyone by wearing a pink shirt with his suit.
eyelessgame
@Roger Moore: Not totally – I think the disappearance of decent airline food has more to do with technology and its limitations: with the fact that the price of tickets appears on Priceline et al, but the quality of the food doesn’t. I’d pay $10 more per ticket for decent food. But I don’t know who has decent food at the point where I’m buying a ticket.
PanAmerican
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Pan Am hired male pursers until 1965 – they weren’t gonna leave a dame in charge of the cabin.
chopper
@Roger Moore:
so remove the commas.
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
nice.
Slugger
Sorry people, but women in the 1960’s were simply hotter. Also, the whiskey was smoother, music was cooler, and sunsets more colorful. You all just missed out.
schrodinger's cat
@Slugger: Should we also get off your lawn grandpa?
Mnemosyne
@Bloix:
Ah, so there’s no sexism at all in his theory that flight attendants are all ugly now because of deregulation.
Thanks for mansplaining that for me! I must have been misled by my silly, silly uterus again and needed a big strong man to point me the right direction.
David in NY
@Slugger: God, yes.
Woodrowfan
Sorry people, but women in the
1960’s1970s were simply hotter. Also, the whiskey was smoother, music was cooler, and sunsets more colorful. You all just missed out.FTFY
Bulworth
Also, too: has anyone gotten their check from George Soros this week for #OWS? I haven’t gotten mine. We’re supposed to ramming this #OWS sht down everyone’s throats, but we can’t do that if Soros doesn’t pony up.
Tonal Crow
@DFS:
Smells like the Dunning-Kruger effect:
The climate blogs are especially infested with this sort of thing; it’s not uncommon, for example, for teatards to proclaim that climate scientists disregard the sun’s effect on earth’s climate.
Samara Morgan
@Moonbatting Average: yeah!
now do you get my joke about Snowcrash pizzas being Delivernated to the trading floor?
(that anne laurie deleted, the mean old crone).
Samara Morgan
@Moonbatting Average: yeah!
now do you get my joke about the owies/anonymous having Snowcrash pizzas delivernated to the trading floor?
(that mean old anne laurie deleted it).
Elliecat
@Bloix:
Unfortunately yes! And don’t forget “I’m So-and-so. Fly Me!”
I don’t know which ad pushed my mother off the fence and into full-on feminism, the one with the women seductively cooing, “Fly me!” or the Doral cigarette commercial with the woman singing, “Taste me! Taste me! Come on and taste me!”
Roger Moore
@eyelessgame:
There’s probably some of that going on, too. At my work we have a purchasing policy that says we’re supposed to get tickets that are within $15 of the cheapest available for our flight requirements, but that applies only to the fare price. An airline that charges extra fees for every little thing can come in $20 dollars lower than one that bundles those charges into the ticket price while still charging a lot more after all the nickel and dime stuff is paid for. That kind of ticket price only policy definitely encourages unbundling. OTOH, a lot of the time I think I’m happier buying food on the ground and taking it on the plane with me than I would be with whatever the airline would provide.
David in NY
@Mnemosyne: Neither Bloix, with whom I agreed, nor I, said there was no sexism in the author’s theory.
What we did say was that you read his theory wrong, when you originally said that it was that anti-discrimination laws had caused his perceived change in the attractiveness of flight attendants. He did not say that. He did say, as you now seem to agree, that this perceived change was “because of deregulation.” That is, his argument is even more offensive than what you first said it was — it is that flight attendants no longer look “hot” because it is cheaper to hire ugly people than attractive ones.
Our point was not that he was not sexist. It was only that you had misconstrued the nature of his argument, which is even more stupid than the one you initially attributed to him. That is all.
Julie Raffety
@werebear My divorced mother in the 50’s was a bookkeeper. I remember her telling us once that the man she shared the office with earned more than her even though they did the same job, but he had a family to support. Her four children that she supported were sitting at the kitchen table at the time. I was about 9 or ten, but I’ve never forgotten how unfair it was.
When I try to explain this rational to my students they look at me as if I was claiming that I once met a real Martian.
@woodrowfan: I am very glad to hear that!!
Arclite
@David in NY:
THIS. I was about to point this out exactly when I saw you beat me to it (so obvious, I figured someone must have).
Arclite
Also, too. If not for unions, women flight attendants would still be forced to retire if they turned 32 or got married.
PIGL
@eyelessgame: which deficiency, exactly, are you repairing at this moment?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@catclub:
merely but one specific example. the point is that even after dereg, the schools that were mandatory training centers had a supreme focus on personal appearance and style. hair, nails, everything. it was how they weeded people out, it wasn’t even so much about looks, or appeal, as it was conformity to a standard, and conformity, period. it was also about keeping the students and flight attendants they would become constantly under foot, control.
which is different than what gives straight men a boner, in most cases. not that straight men aren’t adaptive, boner wise, its just that the standards don’t exist to enhance said boners, but to serve a corporate control and conform purpose.
women on tv, in a show aiming for a larger male demo, are there primarily to cause boners.
The Spy Who Loved Me
I thought Doug had stopped reading Megan McArdle. I guess he just can’t quit her.
jimmiraybob
Penis ornament – just the quality that one looks for in a flight attendant when the jet’s five feet over the Hudson with no engines.
Lyrebird
@BGinCHI: Size is overrated, and prob’ly no one will read this, but thanks for the little dicksian analysis! I needed that laugh!
Bloix
#126- I didn’t say that Glen Whitman wasn’t a sexist. He is a sexist. I said that you were wrong. You were wrong. You clearly didn’t read the link but you decided to tell everyone what it meant because you understood it without reading it.
That’s been the history of the comments on this thread from top to bottom -people know what’s wrong with Whitman without even reading him!
Samara Morgan
@Tonal Crow:
hahaha! bah-loney!
the geek will inherit the earth
Samara Morgan
that is opaque, sry, but REAMDE is a love affair with technogeekdom.
i think stephenson is an ubertechie himself.
Samara Morgan
snowcrash was published in 1992– almost 20 years ago….we all evolve.
worn
@Woodrowfan: Yeah and when they were consolidating lands for the formation of Ft. Benning, my great grandmother received as much for her 300 acres as did the man next door for his 50. Such was the times.
El Cid
@Tonal Crow:
Ain’t none of them big-head ivory tower elitist ‘scientists’ ever done thought about looking up in the sky and noticing that the Sun is hot?
How’s about that, Al Gore?
It takes regular people who ain’t all gone along with the ‘consensus’ to see the basics of what’s really goin’ on.
Also I heard Mars & Jupiter are heating up too; why don’t they think of ever looking at that, either, huh?
Samara Morgan
@DougJ
there are no honest libertarians or sane conservatives left in America.
And there wont be until after November 2012.