It's always interesting to gain a bit of insight into careers different to your own; like being a flight attendant, for example. Spending your working life 36,000 feet in the air is pretty unusual, so we were fascinated to read Beth Windsor's piece for The Telegraph in which she reveals some of the inside info about her job.
Having worked as an air stewardess for various airlines including British Airways over the past four years, Beth was just the person to share insight into the extent of flight attendants' training, for example, which includes knowing how to navigate a Lost-style situation. Giving Bear Grylls a run for his money, Beth revealed all hosts and hostesses are equipped with skills in building shelters, sending out SOS signals, and finding safe drinking water - which is good to know.
But there was one fairly shocking revelation in among Beth's tell-all article; air hostesses aren't allowed to gain weight. It's just... against the rules.
"Once you're issued with a uniform, that's it - you can't change it for a size bigger if you find you've put on a few pounds," Beth writes. Which seems kind of odd; obviously airlines don't want to spend a fortune on varying uniform sizes to allow for their employees' fluctuating waist-lines, but sometimes people just put on weight, right? Isn't that just life? Shouldn't that be accounted for to an extent?
If you're an air stewardess and you feel the seams of your uniform about to burst, you're apparently given one month to lose the weight, according to Beth. "Otherwise you will be put on a weight management programme," she notes.
Wow. That doesn't sound at all humiliating...
Beth also wrote about the strict grooming standards most airlines enforce when it comes to their female flight attendants.
"Wonder why cabin crew always look immaculate? That's because they're disciplined if grooming standards aren't followed to the letter," she explained.
"Skirts can't go above the knee, heels must not be higher than three inches, lipstick has to be a certain shade of red and constantly applied, and nails must always be manicured with only pink, red or French polish."
And it gets even further in depth. "Some airlines have also been known to check the colour of your bra before a flight, so being on your best beauty behaviour is a must," the air hostess added.
Perhaps it's just me, but this all sounds a little intense, does it not? Plus, I can't help but wonder whether the male flight attendants are subjected to the same aesthetic pressures as their female counterparts.
I guess there's some sense in the grooming rules; passengers are so used to seeing the perfected, composed look of air stewardesses that we'd probably be a little perturbed to see one whose hair looked like she'd been dragged through a bush backwards. But the weight thing? I don't see why people are any less able to do their job with a few extra pounds of weight on them.
You can read Beth's piece in full here.
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