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By Sarah Daniell
As a nostalgia
trip it was priceless, but, like its subjects, the
air
hostesses, there was far more to Coffee, Tea, or
Me (Saturday, TV One, 8.35pm) than first met the
eye.
Looking back to the days when the
expression "come
fly with me" was actually an invitation to board
a plane, this smart, insightful documentary by New
Zealander Brita McVeigh charted the experiences of
former air hostesses who started out wide eyed and
naive and ended up as unlikely but formidable campaigners
for equal pay and rights for women.
They wore mini-skirts
and "yeah baby" falsies
(eyelashes). They walked and talked the same. We're
talking about the days when failing to be ladylike
or not filing your nails was a crime against humanity.
These days, you can get arrested as
a terrorist suspect for possession of an emery board.
Then, no one had heard of deep-vein thrombosis and even
the unions believed that workers' rights were a male-only
privilege. Sheilas had their place. Unless, of course,
you were Germaine Greer, who also made an appearance,
looking rangey and rather gorgeous and broadcasting to
the world how she didn't wear knickers. It was a weird
admission when juxtaposed with the subjugated "air
mattresses",
who had in their contracts that they must always wear
clean and seamly underwear.
Back in those days, a male
colleague could blithely say, "While
you're down there . . .", as you bent to get
a dropped pen, without fear of being decked or slapped
with a sexual harassment suit.
It was all just a
joke back then, said Emerald Gilmour. She and others
talked about the exotic days spent in places such as
Honolulu and Tahiti, before they had to fly back home.
Well,
as the saying goes, it's all good fun till someone
gets hurt. And, like the complimentary miniature bottle
of wine we all used to enjoy on an Auckland-to-Wellington
Ansett service, you just knew it wouldn't last.
Looking
back is at once a scary and fascinating experience.
Scary because the experiences of these women, the trolley
dollies or cart-tarts as they were called, weren't that
long ago. And fascinating, because it is an indication
of how far women have come, or haven't, as the case may
be.
The documentary expertly wove in the
sense of nostalgia with the 1987 Human Rights case in
which 17 air hostesses took Air New Zealand to the
Equal
Opportunities Tribunal. And won.
These women, who enjoyed
their jobs immensely, looked back not with anger, but
with a remarkable sense of humour considering they endured
a 13-year battle for equality - not just against the
airline, but also the union that was supposed
to represent them.
It seems extraordinary now that hostesses
were expected to resign when they married,
or hit 35. They weren't entitled to superannuation or
promotion and they were told off if they put on weight.
A TV commercial at the time summed
up the view of air hostesses, featuring a model of Twiggy-like
proportions doing a strip show to a voice-over that said: "We
believe that even an airline hostess should look like
a girl."
Tom Skinner, the gruff old secretary
of the hostesses' union, said in a meeting to discuss
the resignation-at-marriage issue, "You
sit here, girl." Then he said to
the suits on the other side of the table, "The
girl here's got something to tell you."
Emerald
said: "I
was called a lesbian, I had ideas above
my station - women should be seen and
not heard." During the case, they
were victimised with mafia-style tactics.
Shirley Neale, a Maori hostess, was racially
attacked. In court, during evidence,
one steward reportedly said: "Over
my dead body would that black bitch be
promoted."
They went in sweet innocents
and left tougher and wiser. And, in
Shirley's case, still loyal after all these years.
She started with the company in 1964
and is Air New Zealand's longest-serving flight attendant.
You've come a long way, baby.
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