This captivating icon also exposes how seemingly innocuous matters like lipstick, girdles, and virginity have unexpectedly-and surreptitiously-been at the forefront of ideological battles of international politics. Beauty has had serious political, economic, and military consequences. Images of pretty women have structured our possibilities in this shrinking world and they have significantly influenced the lives of American women (and men) in terms of both aspirations and real behavior. Beauty, gender, and sex are not frivolous sidebars to "real history"-they are major forces that have framed global debates and shaped the nation's past. This cultural history of the stewardess deepens historical interpretations of gender and sexuality in postwar America by considering these iconic women in the context of globalization, Cold War politics, consumer culture, and the emerging romance with glamour in the United States. In order to understand the rise of the women's movement and the sexual revolution in the United State's during the 1960's, we need to consider the United States in relation to global politics. Within the context of Cold War propaganda, the stewardess shows how ideas about gender snuck across international borders and changed each nation. The stewardess suggests the ways in which gender, sexuality, and beauty have been powerful elements of international politics. Images of pretty stewardesses have served to install and justify international hierarchies with serious political, military, and economic consequences. Ultimately, some of the most important air raids of the Cold War were waged by pretty women serving champagne at thirty-thousand feet.
Victoria Vantoch in The Jet Sex: Airline Stewardesses and the Making of an American Icon
