An informatively readable combination of cultural and feminist history.
A New York Times contributor examines how airline stewardesses stood up to their misogynist industry.
When 19-year-old Patt Gibbs interviewed to become a stewardess in 1961, she had no fondness for the “high heels, makeup, [and] girdles” or expectations for “Barbie-slim[ness]” she associated with the job. What she did have was youth and status as an unmarried woman at a time when airlines pushed stewardesses into retirement once they reached their 30s or married. Wulfhart, a seasoned travel reporter who has also written for Travel + Leisure, Bon Appétit, and other publications, interweaves Gibbs’ personal story with a larger narrative of how female flight attendants struggled to build long-term careers built on benefits and good wages rather than the promise of glamour and adventure. Like her future colleagues, Gibbs’ professional journey began at “the charm farm,” a stewardess college that trained women in emergency procedures, personal stylishness, and what the promotional material called “the gracious art of making people happy.” Yet Gibbs, who was “coming into her own as a lesbian” though not “out,” was disciplined almost immediately for violating sexist airline rules like not wearing white gloves at all times and riding a motorcycle to work. Drafted into a weak stewardess union, Gibbs went from reluctant member to one of its leading spokespeople. Over the next several years, she and her union colleagues struggled against dress codes that forced stewardesses into miniskirts, flimsy paper dresses, and go-go boots. Gibbs led the fight to join with the then-male dominated Transport Workers Union for expansion of flight attendant rights and then spearheaded a new, woman-led Association of Professional Flight Attendants in the 1970s when the TWU faltered in its promises to help the stewardesses reach their goals. Accompanied by occasional black-and-white images, this engaging narrative offers a fascinating look at how the intersection of the women’s and labor movements helped a little-discussed, female-dominated profession achieve viability and respect.
An informatively readable combination of cultural and feminist history.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54645-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
A cogent “horror story” about the plot to reanimate mid-20th-century White male supremacy at the expense of abortion access.
Incisive look at the destructive path of anti-abortion ideology in the U.S.
Even though most Americans believe in a woman’s right to choose—“consistent research has shown that more than 7 in 10 Americans support legal access to abortion”—the radical right has succeeded in steadily eroding reproductive freedoms since Roe v. Wade. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America leaders Hogue and Langford, the campaign against abortion is but a means to an end for the architects of the pro-life movement. Their true aim is the uncontested dominion of White Christian men. The battle began in 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education struck down “state laws used by segregationists to maintain structural inequality in the nation’s schools.” In 1976, the IRS rescinded the tax-exempt status of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s segregationist Bob Jones University. What has followed, argue the authors convincingly, is more than a half-century of machinations designed “to halt progressive cultural change and maintain power for a privileged minority.” Anti-abortion rhetoric is just a weapon, driven by design, propaganda, disinformation, and cowed Republican politicians—hallmarks of the Trump era. Hogue and Langdon make a strong case that the rises of Trump, fake news, and science skepticism are not flukes but rather the culmination of a dogged campaign by forces still smarting from desegregation and second- and third-wave feminism. The reproductive freedom of American women is the victim of an “anti-democratic power grab on a historic scale.” The authors build a chilling case that the startling 2019 wave of abortion bans across the nation should serve as a canary in the coal mine for citizens concerned with democracy and a catalyst for bolder messaging, better strategic planning, and sustained action to combat disinformation.
A cogent “horror story” about the plot to reanimate mid-20th-century White male supremacy at the expense of abortion access.Pub Date: July 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947492-50-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Strong Arm Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2020
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A...
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.).
In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see “a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences,” as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium’s “intense, murderous radioactivity,” then perhaps 84 isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s call to revel in “intercourse with the world”—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens’ last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to “see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-49293-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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