Beautiful, long-haired, flirting with pilots, tall lady on high heels, legs long to the sky, smiling, sympathetic, elite, nice smelling and nice-looking to make passengers enjoy the flight. This description sounds familiar?
How many times when you heard the word "stewardess" such a picture came to your mind? There are plenty of stereotypes and stories about flight attendants. Over the years, thousands of them have been created, from generation to generation framed in a spicy and sparkling aureola, they have grown to the rank of legends about dragons and unicorns. How many of these beliefs passed from grandmothers to grandchildren are true? I will probably surprise you - none. Most of them not only are not real, but are also harmful, painful and very unfair to people doing this job.
Silly girls for whom only beautiful appearance, money, nice photos in uniforms and prestige count. Running on high heels and shaking their butt in front of the pilots, having nothing in their heads and living romance. Girls who are unfit for life, unable to have a long term relationship, for whom marriage and kids are the words deleted from the dictionary. Avoiding commitments, frequently changing partners, having a different guy at every airport and in every country, they probably slept with half of the world, of course. They will be old maids, they'll never settle their lives, nobody will want them, hussies.
They can only smile, look beautiful and walk like queens, waitresses in the air. They serve food and clean up the trash, what they're paid for, pfff. What's so difficult about it? Empty dolls. Someone should speak to them reasonably, how can they live like that! They'll have a job until they're thirty, and when they stop being pretty, they'll have nowhere to live, without any money or perspectives, because they will no longer be needed by anyone. They'll regret the wasted time.
"I wonder how many pilots she has already slept with"
"I have to watch them out, because they may pick up my husband on the plane."
"Maybe I can get one of them? They like quick adventures."
"I will tell her some dirty words, maybe she'll come to me"
What about stewards? Ah, those unfaithful guys, pick up girls on their uniforms when their woman stays at home and thinks she is loved. Men living on taking girls to bed, after all, have so many opportunities to catch, they've probably created an international collection. They are lucky, women coming to them like to gold, surely many men could be jealous of them. Ah poor their partners, constantly cheated and betrayed. But wait, all flying men are gay! It's such a feminine profession, no real man does it!
"I'll talk to him, he'll probably go easy, he's just waiting for fun."
"Gay, real men don't serve people."
"Male doll, humiliates himself."
Such sick and humiliating stereotypes, arising from the too big imagination, and above all the ignorance and lack of knowledge of those who create and spread them, are misleading, offensive and simply harmful, and as close to the truth as the rabbit is to the dragon.
Those who say such nonsense are none other than people who have never ever in their lives had anything to do with either aviation or cabin crew, and the only thing they speak about is pictures and stereotypes heard from other people, so it's closed circle.
If only they knew those working in planes privately, they would know that they are really normal people, loving, having long-term relationships, families, husbands, wives, kids, creating a normal life and relationships with others, just rich in lot of great experiences, exploring the world, new cultures, places, nations, with very broad (on the contrary to people living stereotypes) horizons. Not just singles and playboys, as it seems to some people.
Flight attendants are not stupid and empty dolls who jump on pilots and are unable to hold their legs together. They are not slutty girls who are looking for erotic adventures under the camouflage of business trips. They are not cute idiots who can only smile and serve drinks in the air, with no perspectives for the future. They are decent, wise and educated people with experience and excellent perspectives for the future. They are women with passions who, apart from work, have their settled life in the place where they live and don't change their partners all the time.
Stewards are not male Barbie dolls who have been stripped of their masculinity and told to serve others. They don't do this job just to pick up as many girls as possible and be able to brag amongst their friends. They don't lead a double, triple or quadruple life with many women at the same time. Many of them are husbands and fathers, faithful and loving, and not, as it seems, womanizers using uniforms to get mistresses.
And above all else, all those who live in misconceptions and think that flight attendants are just waitresses in the air, should think about about one thing: who would help them and what would they do if something bad happened during the flight, fainting, heart attack, stroke, epilepsy attack, panic attack, childbirth, cardiac arrest or even death, which, contrary to appearances, are not a script from an action movie, but reality that happens more often than anyone might think. Who would help them if an emergency occurred? Who would show them where and what to do, what to use to save themselves? Surely cola and cake, right?
Exactly. Maybe by putting themselves in imagination in such a hypothetical situation they would understand that cabin crew are not on board just to look beautiful and give passengers meals, but above all, they are responsible for their lives and health, for saving them in an emergency, for securing their survival. Maybe they would understand that being a flight attendant is a damn responsible job that the stupid and the weak wouldn't be able to do.
I hope that at least some of the people who unfairly assess flight attendants will someday find out how much mistaken they are and that cabin crew are really people carrying their safety in their hands while flying and that these people can save their life. I hope that those people who live stereotypes will see the true reality and appreciate, and after their flight will feel gratitude for the efforts put into ensuring their good travel and safety.
