Part nurse, part waitress, part savior, part seductress, the airline stewardess was both a character conjured from male fantasy and an avatar of an era of unprecedented female freedom. As Julia Cooke describes in her recently released book Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am, most stewards in the early days of air travel were men, but as the jet age bloomed in the mid-20th century, airline executives grasped and advertised the appeal of a certain type of young woman who could emit an alchemical mix of glamour, cosmopolitanism, know-how, and adventure. Cooke quotes Pan Am’s chief executive, Najeeb Halaby, on the company’s efforts to outdazzle its rapidly multiplying competition: “We must add to [our excellence] ‘a new dimension’–that is, emphasis on what pleases people. And I know of nothing that pleases people more… than female people.”
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