‘Creamy and seductive’: Gender surveillance in flight attendant work

Abstract

Despite attempts by airlines and the wider tourism industry to cultivate more diverse working environments, gendered practices and pressures persist. A feminist poststructuralist approach involving interviews with flight attendants from three airlines is used to examine how airlines attempt to construct the ideal aesthetic flight attendant, and how individual workers may resist these gendered practices through their work. The findings demonstrate that airlines consistently shape and discipline flight attendants' gendered grooming performances through rules, peer-surveillance and engendering self-regulation. While flight attendants occasionally employ subtle forms of resistance, they primarily adhere to traditional gender norms. The paper provides a conceptual shift from binary perspectives on surveillance in tourism work to a relational understanding that reveals circulatory force.