|
A wry look at the changing image of
New Zealand’s air hostesses over the years is the
vehicle for a fascinating chronicle of substantial social
change.
Seven women talk candidly to filmmaker
Brita McVeigh about their lives as hostesses, regaling
us with
anecdotes that are borne out with generous dollops
of hilarious archival footage: a change in uniform always
made the newsreels.
They reveal the looney specifics
of
exacting beauty regimes and an institutional obsession
with correctness that never admitted that so much
of the image was about insinuating sexual availability.
But
these women were living the high life, earning well – for
girls – and enjoying long layovers in Los
Angeles, Honolulu, Tahiti…what did they have
to complain about? The saga of their struggle for
equal rights,
pay and superannuation provides painful evidence
of how unshakeable
and restrictive the manufactured image of them
remained well into the 1980’s.
Coffee, tea
or me? Is galvanised by the recollections of the
indomitable
few amongst
them who struggled for 13 years to win their equal
Opportunity
case against Air New Zealand. Clearly inspired
by the gift beneath the welcoming smiles, Brita
McVeigh
who
was being born when most of them were handing out
cheese and crackers, does them proud.
“
I used to think gosh, this is terrible! These poor men.
Their wives didn’t seem to understand them at all…”
‘
You met some wonderful people and they’d say
when you are in Oamaru, Timaru, Invercargill come and
look me up and in Invercargill there used to be an
oyster factory just down the road from the Grand Hotel.
Well, I used to sit there and shell oysters while the
boys sat there and… ate oysters,
and drank Leopard lager - and this is how we used to
pass the time. We used to have two days off in Invercargill
after doing a flight down the country, and people used
to open their homes to us - you were just one of the
family. You were always treated as a lady and people
that flew with you thought you were just… wonderful’.
Air New Zealand flight attendant
1970 – 1996
When we started, and we had the really
short skirts on, they’d
all try to get you to put their luggage in the hat
rack, cause,
then you’d be pushing your arms up above, to put
the luggage
in the hat rack,…and they’d all look up your
skirt - pretty
exciting stuff in those days. There weren’t inflight
movies then,
so they’d take books and look up hostesses skirts!
So we used to wear what they call witches britches.
We had different
coloured outfits that we wore on the plane and we’d
usually
wear a contrasting colour of knickers, the long ones
that would come down, just awful if you think about
them now, but we thought this was pretty funny. So
you’d
lean up and that’s all they’d get an eyeful
of, not much else’.
Air New Zealand flight attendant
1972 - 1979
‘
I think back now and laugh about,… how I spent
a lot of time
probably, in the first two years, I was twenty one
twenty two,
listening to pilots telling me how their wives didn’t
understand
them. I used to think gosh this is terrible! these
poor men …their wives didn’t seem to understand
them at all. It took me a while to figure out that
their wives understood them very well,… too well.
And you live and learn’.
VARIETY.comKen Eisner16
Wednesday 2002
VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
September 23 - October 11, 2002
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
PORTRAITS
ON THE PERIPHERY OF THE WORLD
THE DOMINION POST - 3 rd March
2003
By Sarah Daniell
HOW
TROLLEY DOLLIES CONQUERED THE SKIES
Director Brita McVeigh
Producer Gaylene Preston / Brita McVeigh
Photography Cameron McLean
Editor Tim Woodhouse
Sound Tim Prebble / Mike Hedges
Music Paul Casserly
Production Co Gaylene Preston Productions
With: Shirley Neale, Lana Simpson, Emerald
Gilmour, Lyn Davis, Jane Myhre, Carolyn Penney, Mary
Alice
Watts
|
