Queering of the skies: How gay male flight attendants came to outnumber their straight counterparts
Queerty.Tom, now 78, was part of one the first mixed batches to train with American Airlines in 1973. In a class of 52 stewards, 12 were male, of which 9 were gay.
Interviewing Tom today, some of the assumptions I had turned true. Firstly, in a prevalently female community, gay men strived in an almost accepting environment.
It’s no secret that women were – and often still are – a gay man’s best friends, thus bestowing the validation gay men struggled to find elsewhere (read: dad, are you proud of me?)– particularly in professional environments.
Tom describes the aeroplane as a stage six miles high “we catered to wants and needs in a way that current passengers have never experienced,” adding, “The flight attendants were the cast that performed the service show to the seated audience.”In an era before smartphones, Wi-Fi, and inflight entertainment, the service was the entertainment.
