Sex and the Stewardess

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Perhaps the most compelling indication of the impact of technological advance in twentieth-century America is not the replacement of the horse by the automobile, of the bookkeeper by the computer, or of the church supper by the nude party. Much as these three changes seem to encompass societal change itself. I would submit that they are secondary to another replacement: that of the farmer’s daughter by the stewardess.

Because as surely as God made little green apples, salesmen made farmers’ daughters in half the unprinted jokes circulating in America a few decades ago. Whatever her role in fact, the farmer’s daughter was forever cast as the embodiment of what the American male hoped the American female might be — naïve and yet knowledgeable, young, unspoiled, and at once both horny and hygienic.

It is this role which the present-day airline hostess has largely taken over. She is every man’s dream mistress, pleasant and poised, neatly groomed and becomingly coiffed, cool under stress, always smiling, and — because she is booked on another flight tomorrow morning — as conveniently disposable as an air-sickness bag.

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