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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Glimpse Into A Privileged Work Condition, April 26, 2008
This review is from: Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant (Paperback)
Whitelegg has written an accessible account of the fight attendant profession for those in the airline industry, travelers, and academics. As a flight attendant for nearly 22 years now, I know how airlines manage workers through fear and intimidation. The fact that Drew Whitelegg does not work in the industry and was still able to solicit candid responses from interviewees alone is a great feat. My labor contract states that a flight attendant can be terminated for talking disparagingly about the airline! It is understandable that some respondents had to size him up to determine his true intensions and for whom he actually works.
Most accurate in his portrayal of flight attendants is the cost-benefit decisions made daily, which often hold "lifestyle" over wages and benefits. I continue in this profession because I love my lifestyle--my job is my identity. This, however, doesn't mean that I accept continuing discriminatory practices, labor and management conflicts, abuse from passengers, and harm caused by extreme cuts to labor, but flight attendants are left with little choice when labor unions, in many ways, have a history of complicity in the commodification of labor.
Many books about or even by flight attendants are anecdotal at best, and a sociological perspective long overdue. I suspect that those who choose not to read this book do so because they wish to keep flight attendants firmly as a retro icon of servitude, rather than acknowledge us as safety professionals. No one should feel disposable in their job, yet soon after 9/11 a pilot told me just that: "Put your body between a hijacker and the flight deck door--you are disposable."
I hope those who read this book look differently at your cabin crew the next time you fly. We are human and have the right to make a living just like anyone else whether we are aging, overweight, married, or have children. This book is a must read and I also recommend "Femininity in Fight" by Kathleen M. Barry.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an easy read, and I really enjoyed it, September 4, 2007
This review is from: Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant (Paperback)
In Working the Skies, Drew Whitelegg takes the interviews and study of a multitude of flight attendants and creates a readable, enjoyable tale of the perils and possibilities flight attendants face. The book is part psychology, part history and part cultural study with plenty of personal tales from retired and active flight attendants. The majority of flight attendants are women, which places the job in a unique historical and social context.
Commercial flight became popular and accessible during the 1950s and 1960s. Originally, flight attendants were registered nurses to allay any health and safety concerns by fliers. It also became a respectable way for women to "escape" the house and have jobs.
As flight became safer in the 1960s, with pressurized cabins and other improvements, airlines began using the attraction and sex appeal of their flight attendants. The exotic destinations and glamour of air travel was celebrated. The author makes the case that there is currently nostalgia for this glamorous ideal of the flight attendant's world that is at odds with the demands and hazards of the job.
"Space-out" was an often-repeated phrase/concept used by the author. Flight attendants in the capacity of their job are able to create a separate world from their home world. This gives them a particular freedom of autonomy and self-expression not as available to other women, working or not. The excitement and freedom that the job allows flight attendants in the "space-out" is countered by the guilt that many flight attendants with children and those in a relationship. It's a complex issue combining cultural and social norms of what a woman should be for her children and partner with the affects of the job on the psyche along with the enjoyment of being able to "get away."
The airlines are painted as worried more about bottom-line then the lives and concerns of flight attendants: shorter layovers, less staff, a return to the "sexy" flight attendant imagery of the past that causes a "squeeze-in" where freedom becomes restricted. It's worth noting that most upper management staff are male, compared to the female-dominated flight attendant staff.
Working the Skies is an easy read, and I really enjoyed it. After reading this book, on my next flight I will be paying more attention and respect to the flight attendants I see.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The career might be fast-paced and disorienting, but the book isn't, February 16, 2010
This review is from: Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant (Paperback)
If you're looking for anecdotes about the excitement of a flight attendant's day-to-day, this is not your book. If you're looking for a sociological study of the history of the position, that is what you will get.
It's rare that I have trouble finishing a book, but this book was the exception. I'm well familiar with academic literature, and this book reads like a dissertation... as I suspect it originally was. The author is trying to stretch his (obviously extensive) research into something interesting and readable, but the end result - the book - is as dray and colorless as the research. Too much is made of the concept of flight attendants as being "spaced out," a term the author coins (and then overuses) to describe their relative position vis-a-vis time and physical space. In other words, the job pays not only financially, but also by giving (predominantly) women a chance to carve out separate spheres of their lives.
Some of the historical background to the modern industry is fascinating, but it's bogged down by the unreadability of the reporting. Other facts are presented as novel, in what reads as almost an insult to the reader. (For instance, flight attendants have their own lingo! They talk of "picking up shifts" - whatever could that mean?) In an attempt to be thorough, the author has over-researched.
This book will be worthwhile for some readers, for certain, and definitely has a place in academia. However, the attempts to bill it as being of mass-market interest are perhaps too ambitious.
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