There is just something about the middle of summer that makes people think of getting away. Whether it is the heat, the desire to be out in the sun, or just the restless human nature, there is definitely a reason why summer is the season to travel. Looking at air travel, 13 of the 15 busiest travel days are in the summer, where, according to this year’s air travel numbers, 231 million passengers are expected to travel on U.S. airlines, which breaks down to 2.51 million passengers a day (331,000 of which will be international travellers). Dealing with so many flights, people, and differing needs, there is an individual on the plane that can make air travel a little easier, more relaxing, and more comfortable for everyone: the stewardess.
Sure, we know that the politically-correct, gender-neutral modern term is “flight attendant,” but the term stewardess is far from being slanderous. The original word, steward, first mentioned circa 1000AD and noted by Thomas Wright and Richard Paul Wülker in their 1884 work, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, has its roots in Old English as a combination of stig, meaning ‘hall or part of a house,’ and weard, meaning ‘guard,’ essentially making the title of a person who oversees part of the house (in a domestic sense).
It would take a further 6 centuries for the word to obtain the feminine form, stewardess, which was first noted in James Mabbe’s 1631 translation of Fernando de Rojas’ tragic comedy The Spanish Bawd, where he writes: “O variable fortune..thou Ministress and high Stewardess of all temporal happiness.”
Still, this version of a female steward is a couple of centuries away from what we know. The first form of what we would understand as being a stewardess is discussed in 1837, by the social theorist Harriet Martineau in his work Society in America: “Mrs. F. and I were the only ladies on board; and there was no stewardess,” meaning no female attendants for the female passengers.
As the 20th century witnessed the rise of air travel and the casting aside of Victorian ideals of gender-mixing, we begin to see the emergence of our modern concept in a 1931 issue of United Airlines News, which writes that: “Uniformed stewardesses employed on the Chicago-San Diego divisions of United.”
Interestingly though, while we may have come to associate them with trivialities such as something to drink, a snack, or a pillow and blanket, they, much like their forebearers, are still responsible for the overall health and safety of all of their passengers, so, if you are one of the million flying passengers this summer, be sure to thank your stewardess!
