TERRY MASON.
She has been an airline stewardess for six years. She is twenty-six-years old, recently married. "The majority of airline stewardesses are from small towns. I myself am from Nebraska. It"s supposed to be one of the nicest professions for a woman-if she can"t be a model or in the movies. All the great benefits: flying around the world, meeting all those people. It is a nice status symbol.
"I have five older sisters and they were all married before they were twenty. The minute they got out of high school, they would end up getting married. That was the thing everybody did, was get married. When I told my parents I was going to the airlines, they got excited. They were so happy that one of the girls could go out and see the world and spend some time being single. I didn"t get married until I was almost twenty-five. My mother especially thought it would be great that I could have the ambition, the nerve to go to the big city on my own and try to accomplish being a stewardess."
When people ask you what you"re doing and you say stewardess, you"re really proud, you think it"s great. It"s like a stepping stone. The first two months I started flying I had already been to London, Paris, and Rome. And me from Broken Bow, Nebraska. But after you start working, it"s not as glamorous as you thought it was going to be.
They like girls that have a nice personality and that are pleasant to look at. If a woman has a problem with blemishes, they take her off. Until the appearance counselor thinks she"s ready to go back on. One day this girl showed up, she had a very slight black eye. They took her right off. Little things like that.
We had to go to stew school for five weeks. We"d go through a whole week of make-up and poise. I didn"t like this. They make you feel like you"ve never been out in public. They showed you how to smoke a cigarette, when to smoke a cigarette, how to look at a man"s eyes. Our teacher, she had this idea we had to be s.e.xy. One day in cla.s.s she was showing us how to accept a light for a cigarette from a man and never blow it out. When he lights it, just look in his eyes. It was really funny, all the girls laughed.
It"s never proper for a woman to light her own cigarette. You hold it up and of course you"re out with a guy who knows the right way to light the cigarette. You look into their eyes as they"re lighting your cigarette and you"re cupping his hand, but holding it just very light, so that he can feel your touch and your warmth. (Laughs.) You do not blow the match out. It used to be really great for a woman to blow the match out when she looked in his eyes, but she said now the man blows the match out.
The idea is not to be too obvious about it. They don"t want you to look too forward. That"s the whole thing, being a lady but still giving out that womanly appeal, like the body movement and the lips and the eyes. The guy"s supposed to look in your eyes. You could be a real mean woman. You"re a lady and doing all these evil things with your eyes.
She did try to promote people smoking. She said smoking can be part of your conversation. If you don"t know what to say, you can always pull out a cigarette. She says it makes you more comfortable. I started smoking when I was on the airlines.
Our airline picks the girl-next-door type. At one time they wouldn"t let us wear false eyelashes and false fingernails. Now it"s required that you wear false eyelashes, and if you do not have the right length nails, you wear false nails. Everything is supposed to be becoming to the pa.s.senger.
That"s the whole thing: meeting all these great men that either have great business backgrounds or good looking or different. You do meet a lot of movie stars and a lot of political people. but you don"t get to really visit with them that much. You never really get to go out with these men. Stewardesses are impressed only by name people. But a normal millionaire that you don"t know you"re not impressed about. The only thing that really thrills a stewardess is a pa.s.senger like Kennedy or movie stars or somebody political. Celebrities.
I think our average age is twenty-six. But our supervisors tell us what kind of make-up to wear, what kind of lipstick to wear, if our hair is not the right style for us, if we"re not smiling enough. They even tell us how to act when you"re on a pa.s.s. Like last night I met my husband. I was in plain clothes. I wanted to kiss him. But I"m not supposed to kiss anybody at the terminal. You"re not supposed to walk off with a pa.s.senger, hand in hand. After you get out of the terminal, that"s all yours.
The majority of pa.s.sengers do make pa.s.ses. The ones that do make pa.s.ses are married and are business people. When I tell them I"m married, they say, "I"m married and you"re married and you"re away from home and so am I and n.o.body"s gonna find out." The majority of those who make pa.s.ses at you, you wouldn"t accept a date if they were friends of yours at home.
After I was a stewardess for a year, and I was single, I came down to the near North Side of Chicago, which is the swinging place for singles. Stewardess, that was a dirty name. In a big city, it"s an easy woman. I didn"t like this at all. All these books-Coffee, Tea and Me.
I lived in an apartment complex where the majority there were stewardesses. 15 The other women were secretaries and teachers. They would go to our parties and they would end up being among the worst. They never had stories about these secretaries and nurses, but they sure had good ones about stewardesses.
I meet a lot of other wives or single women. The first minute they start talking to me, they"re really cold. They think the majority of stewardesses are sn.o.bs or they may be jealous. These women think we have a great time, that we are playgirls, that we have the advantage to go out with every type of man we want. So when they first meet us, they really turn off on us.
When you first start flying, the majority of girls do live in apartment complexes by the airport. The men they meet are airport employees: ramp rats, cleaning airplanes and things like that, mechanics, and young pilots, not married, ones just coming in fresh.
After a year we get tired of that, so we move into the city to get involved with men that are usually young executives, like at Xerox or something. Young businessmen in the early thirties and late twenties, they really think stewardesses are the gals to go out with if they went to get so far. They wear their hats and their suits and in the winter their black gloves. The women are getting older, they"re getting twenty-four, twenty-five. They get involved with bartenders too. Stewardesses and bartenders are a pair. (Laughs.) One time I went down into the area of swinging bars with two other girls. We just didn"t want anybody to know that we were stewardesses, so we had this story made up that we were going to a women"s college in Colorado. That went over. We had people that were talking to us, being nice to us, being polite. Down there, they wouldn"t even be polite. They"d buy you drinks but then they"d steal your stool if you got up to go to the restroom. But when they knew you weren"t stewardesses, just young ladies that were going to a women"s college, they were really nice to us.
They say you can spot a stewardess by the way she wears her make-up. At that time we all had short hair and everybody had it cut in stew school exactly alike. If there"s two blondes that have their hair cut very short, wearing the same shade of make-up, and they get into uniform, people say, "Oh, you look like sisters." Wonder why? (Laughs.) The majority of us were against it because they wouldn"t let you say how you"d like your hair cut, they wouldn"t let you have your own personality, your makeup, your clothes. They"d tell you what length skirts to wear. At one time they told us we couldn"t wear anything one inch above the knees. And no pants at that time. It"s different now.
Wigs used to be forbidden. Now it"s the style. Now it"s permissible for nice women to wear wigs, eyelashes, and false fingernails. Before it was the harder looking women that wore them. Women showing up in pants, it wasn"t ladylike. Hot pants are in now. Most airlines change style every year.
She describes stewardess schools in the past as being like college dorms: it was forbidden to go out during the week; signing in and out on Friday and Sat.u.r.day nights. "They"ve cut down stewardess school quite a bit. Cut down on how to serve meal cla.s.ses and paperwork. A lot of girls get on aircraft these days and don"t know where a magazine is, where the tray tables are for pa.s.sengers . . . Every day we used to have an examination. If you missed over two questions, that was a failure. They"d ask us ten questions. If you failed two tests out of the whole five weeks, you would have to leave. Now they don"t have any exams at all. Usually we get a raise every year. We haven"t been getting that lately."
We have long duty hours. We can be on duty for thirteen hours. But we"re not supposed to fly over eight hours. This is in a twenty-four-hour period. During the eight hours, you could be flying from Chicago to Flint, to Moline, short runs. You stop twenty minutes. So you get to New York finally, after five stops, let"s say. You have an hour on your own. But you have to be on the plane thirty minutes before departure time. How many restaurants can serve you food in thirty minutes? So you"ve gone thirteen hours, off and on duty, having half-hours and no time to eat. This is the normal thing. If we have only thirty minutes and we don"t have time to eat, it"s our hard luck.
Pilots have the same thing too. They end up grabbing a sandwich and eating in the c.o.c.kpit. When I first started flying we were not supposed to eat at all on the aircraft, even though there was an extra meal left over. Now we can eat in the buffet. We have to stand there with all those dirty dishes and eat our meals-if there"s one left over. We cannot eat in the public eye. We cannot bring it out if there"s an extra seat. You can smoke in the c.o.c.kpit, in the restrooms, but not in the public"s eye.
"We have a union. It"s a division of the pilots union. It helps us out on duty time and working privileges. It makes sure that if we"re in Cleveland and stuck because of weather and thirteen hours have gone by, we can go to bed. Before we had a union the stew office would call and say, "You"re working another seven." I worked one time thirty-six hours straight."
The other day I had fifty-five minutes to serve 101 coach pa.s.sengers, a c.o.c.ktail and full-meal service. You do it fast and terrible. You"re very rude. You don"t mean to be rude, you just don"t have time to answer questions. You smile and you just ignore it. You get three drink orders in a hurry. There"s been many times when you miss the gla.s.s, pouring, and you pour it in the man"s lap. You just don"t say I"m sorry. You give him a cloth and you keep going. That"s the bad part of the job.
Sometimes I get tired of working first cla.s.s. These people think they"re great, paying for more, and want more. Also I get tired of coach pa.s.sengers asking for something that he thinks he"s a first-cla.s.s pa.s.senger. We get this att.i.tude of difference from our airlines. They"re just dividing the cla.s.s of people. If we"re on a first-cla.s.s pa.s.s, the women are to wear a dress or a nice pants suit that has a matching jacket, and the men are to dress with suit jacket and tie and white shirt. And yet so many types of first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers: some have grubby clothes, jeans and moccasins and everything. They can afford to dress the way they feel . . .
If I want to fly first cla.s.s, I pay the five dollars difference. I like the idea of getting free drinks, free champagne, free wine. In a coach, you don"t. A coach pa.s.senger might say, "Could I have a pillow?" So you give him a pillow. Then he"ll say, "Could you bring me a gla.s.s of water?" A step behind him there"s the water fountain. In first cla.s.s, if the guy says, "I want a gla.s.s of water," even if the water fountain is right by his arm, you"d bring it for him. We give him all this extra because he"s first cla.s.s. Which isn"t fair . . .
When you"re in a coach, you feel like there"s just head and head and head of people. That"s all you can see. In first cla.s.s, being less people, you"re more relaxed, you have more time. When you get on a 727, we have one coatroom. Our airline tells us you hang up first-cla.s.s coats only. When a coach pa.s.senger says, "Could you hang up my coat?" most of the time I"ll hang it up. Why should I hang up first cla.s.s and not coach?
One girl is for first cla.s.s only and there"s two girls for coach. The senior girl will be first cla.s.s. That first-cla.s.s girl gets used to working first cla.s.s. If she happens to walk through the coach, if someone asks her for something, she"ll make the other girls do it. The first stew always stays at the door and welcomes everybody aboard and says good-by to everybody when they leave. That"s why a lot of girls don"t like to be first cla.s.s.
There"s an old story on the airline. The stewardess asks if he"d like something to drink, him and his wife. He says, "I"d like a martini." The stewardess asks the wife, "Would you like a drink?" She doesn"t say anything, and the husband says, "I"m sorry, she"s not used to talking to the help." (Laughs.) When I started flying, that was the first story I heard.
I"ve never had the nerve to speak up to anybody that"s pinched me or said something dirty. Because I"ve always been afraid of these onion letters. These are bad letters. If you get a certain amount of bad letters, you"re fired. When you get a bad letter you have to go in and talk to the supervisor. Other girls now, there are many of "em that are coming around and telling them what they feel. The pa.s.senger reacts: She"s telling me off! He doesn"t believe it. Sometimes the pa.s.senger needs it.
One guy got this steak and he said, "This is too medium, I want mine rarer." The girl said, "I"m sorry, I don"t cook the food, it"s precooked." He picked up the meal and threw it on the floor. She says, "If you don"t pick the meal up right now, I"ll make sure the crew members come back here and make you pick it up." (With awe) She"s talking right back at him and loud, right in front of everybody. He really didn"t think she would yell at him. Man, he picked up the meal . . . The younger girls don"t take that guff any more, like we used to. When the pa.s.senger is giving you a bad time, you talk back to him.
It"s always: the pa.s.senger is right. When a pa.s.senger says something mean, we"re supposed to smile and say, "I understand." We"re supposed to really smile because stewardesses" supervisors have been getting reports that the girls have been back-talking pa.s.sengers. Even when they pinch us or say dirty things, we"re supposed to smile at them. That"s one thing they taught us at stew school. Like he"s rubbing your body somewhere, you"re supposed to just put his hand down and not say anything and smile at him. That"s the main thing, smile.
When I first went to cla.s.s, they told me I had a crooked smile. She showed me how to smile. She said, "Kinda press a little smile on"-which I did. "Oh, that"s great." she said. "that"s a good smile." But I couldn"t do it. I didn"t feel like I was doing it on my own. Even if we"re sad, we"re supposed to have a smile on our face.
I came in after a flight one day, my grandfather had died. Usually they call you up or meet you at the flight and say, "We have some bad news for you." I picked up this piece of paper in my mailbox and it says, "Mother called in. Your grandfather died today." It was written like, say. two cups of sugar. Was I mad! They wouldn"t give me time off for the funeral. You can only have time off for your parents or somebody you have lived with. I had never lived with my grandparents. I went anyway.
A lot of our girls are teachers, nurses, everything. They do this part-time,"cause you have enough time off for another kind of job. I personally work for conventions. I work electronic and auto shows. Companies hire me to stay in their booth and talk about products. I have this speech to tell. At others, all I do is pa.s.s out matches or candy. Nowadays every booth has a young girl in it.
People just love to drink on airplanes. They feel adventurous. So you"re serving drinks and meals and there"s very few times that you can sit down. If she does sit down, she"s forgotten how to sit down and talk to pa.s.sengers. I used to play bridge with pa.s.sengers. But that doesn"t happen any more. We"re not supposed to be sitting down, or have a magazine or read a newspaper. If it"s a flight from Boston to Los Angeles, you"re supposed to have a half an hour talking to pa.s.sengers. But the only time we can sit down is when we go to the c.o.c.kpit. You"re not supposed to spend any more than five minutes up there for a cigarette.
We could be sitting down on our jump seat and if you had a supervisor on board, she would write you up-for not mixing with the crowd. We"re supposed to be told when she walks on board. Many times you don"t know. They do have personnel that ride the flights that don"t give their names-checking, and they don"t tell you about it. Sometimes a girl gets caught smoking in the cabin. Say it"s a long flight, maybe a night flight. You"re playing cards with a pa.s.senger and you say, "Would it bother you if I smoke?" And he says no. She would write you up and get you fired for smoking in the airplane.
They have a limit on how far you can mix. They want you to be sociable, but if he offers you a cigarette, not to take it. When you"re outside, they encourage you to take cigarettes.
You give your time to everybody, you share it, not too much with one pa.s.senger. Everybody else may be snoring away and there"s three guys, maybe military, and they"re awake "cause they"re going home and excited. So you"re playing cards with "em. If you have a supervisor on, that would be a no-no. They call a lot of things no-no"s.
They call us professional people but they talk to us as very young, childishly. They check us all the time on appearance. They check our weight every month. Even though you"ve been flying twenty years, they check you and say that"s a no-no. If you"re not spreading yourself around pa.s.sengers enough, that"s a no-no. Not hanging up first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers" coats, that"s a no-no, even though there"s no room in the coatroom. You"re supposed to somehow make room. If you"re a pound over, they can take you off flight until you get under.
Accidents? I"ve never yet been so scared that I didn"t want to get in the airplane. But there"ve been times at take-offs, there"s been something funny. Here I am thinking, What if I die today? I"ve got too much to do. I can"t die today. I use it as a joke.
I"ve had emergencies where I"ve had to evacuate the aircraft. I was coming back from Las Vegas and being a lively stewardess I stayed up all night, gambled. We had a load full of pa.s.sengers. The captain tells me we"re going to have an emergency landing in Chicago because we lost a pin out of the nose gear. When we land, the nose gear is gonna collapse. He wants me to prepare the whole cabin for the landing, but not for two more hours. And not to tell the other stewardesses, because they were new girls and would get all excited. So I had to keep this in me for two hours, wondering, Am I gonna die today? And this is Easter Sunday. And I was serving the pa.s.sengers drinks and food and this guy got mad at me because his omelet was too cold. And I was gonna say, "You just wait, buddy, you"re not gonna worry about that omelet." But I was nice about it, because I didn"t want to have trouble with a pa.s.senger, especially when I have to prepare him for an emergency.
I told the pa.s.sengers over the intercom: "The captain says it"s just a precaution, there"s nothing to worry about." I"m just gonna explain how to get out of the airplane fast, how to be in a braced position. They can"t wear gla.s.ses or high heels, purses, things out of aisles, under the seats. And make sure everybody"s pretty quiet. We had a blind woman on with a dog. We had to get people to help her off and all this stuff.
They were fantastic. n.o.body screamed, cried, or hollered. When we got on the ground, everything was fine. The captain landed perfect. But there was a little jolt, and the pa.s.sengers started screaming and hollering. They held it all back and all of a sudden we got on the ground, blah.
I was great. (Laughs.) That"s what was funny. I thought, I have a husband now. I don"t know how he would take it, me dying on an airplane. So I thought, I can"t die. When I got on the intercom, I was so calm. Also we"re supposed to keep a smile on our face. Even during an emergency, you"re supposed to walk through the cabin and make everybody feel comfortable with a smile. When you"re on the jump seat everybody"s looking at you. You"re supposed to sit there, holding your ankles, in a position to get out of that airplane fast with a big fat smile on your face.
Doctors tell stewardesses two bad things about them. They"re gonna get wrinkles all over their face because they smile with their mouth and their eyes. And also with the pressurization on the airplane, we"re not supposed to get up while we"re climbing because it causes varicose veins in our legs. So they say being a stewardess ruins your looks.
A lot of stewardesses wanted to be models. The Tanya girl used to be a stewardess on our airline. A stewardess is what they could get and a model is what they couldn"t get. They weren"t the type of person, they weren"t that beautiful, they weren"t that thin. So their second choice would be stewardess.
What did you want to be?
I wanted to get out of Broken Bow, Nebraska. (Laughs.) POSTSCRIPT: "Every time I go home, they all meet me at the airplane. Not one of my sisters has been on an airplane. All their children think that Terry is just fantastic, because their mom and dad-my sisters and their husbands-feel so stupid, "Look at us. I wish I could have done that." I know they feel bad, that they never had the chance. But they"re happy I can come home and tell them about things. I send them things from Europe. They get to tell all their friends that their sister"s a stewardess. They get real excited about that. The first thing they come out and say, "One of my sisters is a stewardess."
"My father got a promotion with his company and they wrote in their business news that he had a family of seven, six girls and a boy, and one girl is a stewardess in Chicago. And went on to say what I did, and didn"t say a word about anything else."
BERYL SIMPSON.
Prior to her present job as an employment counselor, she had been an airline reservationist for twelve years.
My job as a reservationist was very routine, computerized. I hated it with a pa.s.sion. Getting sick in the morning, going to work feeling, Oh, my G.o.d! I"ve got to go to work.
I was on the astrojet desk. It has an unlisted number for people who travel all the time. This is a special desk for people who spend umpteen millions of dollars traveling with the airlines. They may spend ten thousand dollars a month, a hundred thousand a month, depending on the company. I was dealing with the same people every day. This is so-and-so from such-and-such a company and I want a reservation to New York and return, first cla.s.s. That was the end of the conversation. They brought in a computer called Sabre. It"s like an electric typewriter. It has a memory drum and you can retrieve that information forever. Sabre was so expensive, everything was geared to it. Sabre"s down, Sabre"s up, Sabre"s this and that. Everything was Sabre.
With Sabre being so valuable, you were allowed no more than three minutes on the telephone. You had twenty seconds, busy-out time it was called, to put the information into Sabre. Then you had to be available for another phone call. It was almost like a production line. We adjusted to the machine. The casualness, the informality that had been there previously was no longer there. The last three or four years on the job were horrible. The computer had arrived.
They monitored you and listened to your conversations. If you were a minute late for work, it went into your file. I had a horrible attendance record-ten letters in my file for lateness, a total of ten minutes. You took thirty minutes for your lunch, not thirty-one. If you got a break, you took ten minutes, not eleven.
When I was with the airlines, I was taking eight tranquilizers a day. I came into this business, which is supposed to be one of the most hectic, and I"m down to three a day. Even my doctor remarked, "Your ulcer is healed, it"s going away." With the airline I had no free will. I was just part of that stupid computer.
I remember when I went to work for the airlines, they said, "You will eat, sleep, and drink airlines. There"s no time in your life for ballet, theater, music, anything." My first supervisor told me that. Another agent and I were talking about going to the ballet or something. He overheard us and said we should be talking about work. When you get airline people together, they"ll talk about planes. That is all they talk about. That and Johnny Carson. They are TV-oriented people.
I had much more status when I was working for the airlines than I have now. I was always introduced as Beryl Simpson, who works for the airlines. Now I"m reduced to plain old Beryl Simpson. I found this with boyfriends. I knew one who never dates a girl with a name. He never dates Judy, he never dates Joan. He dates a stewardess or a model. He picks girls for the glamor of their jobs. He never tells you their names. When I was with the airlines, I was introduced by my company"s name. Now I"m just plain old everyday me, thank G.o.d.
I have no status in this man"s eyes, even though I probably make twice as much as the ones he"s proud of. If I"d start to talk about some of the stocks I hold, he"d be impressed. This is true of every guy I ever dated when I was working on the airlines. I knew I had a dumb, stupid, ridiculous, boring job, and these people were glamorizing it. "Oh, she works for the airlines." Big deal. When I used to go back home, the local paper would run my picture and say that I work for the airlines and that I had recently returned from some exotic trip or something. Romance.
A lot of times we get airline stewardesses into our office who are so disillusioned. We"d like to frame their applications when we get a bright-eyed, starry-eyed kid of eighteen who wants a career in the airlines. Big as life disillusionment. We want to say, "It"s not what it"s cracked up to be, girlie." If a girl"s a stewardess, she might as well forget it after twenty-six. They no longer have compulsory retirement, but the girls get into a rut at that age. A lot of them start showing the rough life they"ve lived.
JILL TORRANCE.
She is a photographer"s model, high fashion. Her face is a familiar one in magazine ads as well as on television commercials. She has been engaged in this work for eight years. She earns the city"s top rate: fifty dollars an hour.
I do whatever kind of products anyone wants. This week I had a job for some South American product. They said, "We want you to be s.e.xy, coy, pert, but not too effervescent." It always means the same smile and open eyes. For forty-five minutes they tell you what they want. They explain and explain and you sort of tune out and do the same thing.
There are a lot of people there: the person who has the product, the man from the ad agency, a couple of people from the photography studio, the stylist, who poses your dress to make sure it hangs right . . . suddenly there are a dozen people standing around. Each is telling you to do something else. You know they are even more insecure than you. You pretend you"re listening and you do what you"d planned to do in the first place. When you"ve worked before a camera long enough, you know what they want even though they don"t.
At first you work very hard to try to discover different looks and hairdos. After a while, you know them all. Someone once asked me, "Why do high-fashion models pose with their mouths open? They look like they"re catching flies." (Laughs.) This look has been accepted for a long time. They want everything to be s.e.xy, subtle or overt. After a while, it"s automatic.
Now the natural look is in. Jumping up and down or staring out there . . . What"s natural about looking into s.p.a.ce? They want you natural but posed. (Laughs.) How can you feel natural with three pounds of make-up, in some ridiculous costume, standing there and looking pretty? What they think of as being natural is very phony.
You never know from day to day. I did a job for a snow blower in Michigan. It"s a little machine that ladies are able to push to get snow out of the way. It was ten below. We flew over at five thirty in the morning. I had my long underwear on, but I forgot to wear my heavy shoes and I froze my feet. You"re either doing fur coats in 110 degrees in the summer or bathing suits in the winter. I do whatever they ask me. I take the money and run.
Someone will call you at seven in the morning and say be ready at eight thirty. Can you be there in forty minutes? You"re a basket case trying to get your wardrobe together and be there on time. You"re having a cup of coffee, suddenly the phone rings and you have to run. It"s terrible. Somehow you manage to make it on time. I"m very seldom late. I"m amazed at myself.
I"d like to say I"m sick and can"t make it, but I seldom turn something down unless I think it"s really awful. Usually I"m just rushing and do the job. I feel guilty if I say no. When you"re working for one agency, they expect you to be on call. Otherwise the client may think you"re too pampered.
You go out of your house with your closetful on your arm. Different colors and shoes to match and purses and wigs. Every time I get a taxi, they think I"m going to the airport. They"re upset when I"m going ten blocks away. I"ve never found one to help me in or out of a cab. And I"m a good tipper. So I"ve developed these very strong muscles with one shoulder lower than the other from carrying all the wardrobe about. (Laughs.) In the middle of the winter it"s really horrendous, because you"re fighting all the people to get a taxi. I have three or four pieces of luggage. It"s pretty heavy. Then I struggle out of the cab and upstairs to the studio. You"re supposed to look fresh and your hair is supposed to be sparkling. By the time you get there, you"re perspiring like crazy, and it"s difficult to feel fresh under all those hot lights when you"ve had such a struggle to get there.
What"s your first reaction when the phone rings in the morning and it"s a job call?
Oh, c.r.a.p.
"I hadn"t set out to be a model. I worked as a receptionist in a beauty shop during high school. This was in South Dakota. A woman who had worked for Eileen Ford and had been in Vogue and Harper"s Bazaar said to me, "Why don"t you go to New York and be a model?" I didn"t know what a model was. I thought they were dummies in catalogues. I thought the people in the photographs were just cutouts. I didn"t think they were really people. I paid no attention to advertising,.
"I wanted to go to college, but I had saved only three hundred dollars. So I went to New York at eighteen. I had never put anything on but lipstick and had never worn high-heeled shoes. I walked up and down Lexington Avenue for three hours "cause my room at the Y wasn"t ready. I didn"t dare turn left or right. I just kept walking. A hamburger in South Dakota was twenty-five cents and in this drugstore suddenly it was a dollar and a quarter."
At Eileen Ford, they told me I was too long-waisted and that maybe I should think about something else, and it was too bad since I had come all the way from South Dakota. I was so green.
I looked in the telephone book. Huntington Hartford had just bought this agency. So I went there. I was so bashful I couldn"t even give my name to the receptionist. About a half an hour later, this guy who had just taken over the agency-he"d been a male mode-came in. He was the first man I"d seen in New York, close up. I was just staring at him. He said, "You! Come into my office!" I thought I had really been discovered. He probably called me because I was staring at him and he liked himself a lot. (Laughs.) A week or two later there was a c.o.c.ktail party. I"d never had a drink in my life. They said you should be there at five o"clock. At five I was the only person there. They asked me what I wanted to drink. I didn"t know. I said, "Bourbon and water is really nice." It was awful. The party was for Sammy Kaye. I"d never heard of Sammy Kaye.
The guy just wanted us to be there. He was having fifteen of his favorite models over. You just go. No pay. If there"s an opening at a photography studio or whatever you go, because advertising people are there and you should be seen and you should make sure they remember your face. All the ridiculous things . . . That"s what happens to a lot of girls who go into modeling. They"re very vulnerable. They don"t know what they"re doing. Usually they come from very poor families. This seems glamorous. Most of the girls I met were from Ohio or Indiana or some place like that.
I had fifty cents left in my pocket when I got my first job. I worked two hours and made sixty dollars. It was absolutely incredible to me. I pinned a corsage on a guy. It was some hotel ad in a trade magazine. It was a very silly shot that was terribly simple. I was getting all this money for smiling and pinning a flower on a guy. It didn"t turn out to be that simple.
Most people have strange feelings about standing before a camera. You have to learn to move and make different designs with your body. Some girls know how to puff their nose in and out to make it change or their lips or cheekbones. They practice in front of a mirror.
Usually you"re competing with anywhere from thirty to sixty girls. They"re cattle calls. Sometimes they take you in ten at a time. You wait from forty-five minutes to an hour before you"re called. They narrow it down and ask for three or four to come back. It"s like going out on a job interview every day. Everybody is very insecure. You walk into a room and see thirty beautiful girls and say, "What am I doing here?" Immediately you feel you should leave. But you think you might get three out of fifteen jobs, so . . .
There"s no training needed, no kind of background. People spend thousands of dollars going to charm schools to learn make-up. It"s ridiculous. They just take money from young girls. You learn while you"re working. I didn"t think it was funny the first few years because I was so nervous. After you relax, you see how absurd it all is.
I"ve always had a problem gaining weight. I told a photographer I had gained two pounds. I was happy about it. The agency said, "She"s too fat, tell her to lose weight." They wouldn"t have known if I hadn"t told them.
I think the shyest people get into show business or modeling. They were wallflowers in their cla.s.ses. You never really feel at ease and you force yourself to do things not natural to you. It"s always something that you really aren"t, that someone else wants you to be.
You feel like you"re someone"s clothes hanger. One day someone will say you"re great. In the next studio, they"ll say you"re terrible. It changes from minute to minute: acceptance, rejection. Suddenly it doesn"t mean anything. Why should you base your whole day on how you look in the morning?
My feelings are ambivalent. I like my life because it does give me freedom. I can have half a day off to do things I like. I couldn"t do that if I had a normal job. I could never be a secretary. I make as much money working three hours as a secretary makes in a week. If I had to sit in an office for eight hours a day filing, I would find that more degrading than modeling. I don"t look down at secretaries. Most are talented women who could do better jobs than their bosses probably, but will never get the chance-because they"re women.
I"d probably join women"s lib, but they don"t believe in make-up and advertising, so I couldn"t very well go to their meetings as I am. At school, where I"m studying photography, they said if I had any interest in women"s lib I wouldn"t be modeling. I was trying to tell them women are so underpaid that I couldn"t earn a comparable wage at any other job. They disagreed, but in the next breath they were talking about something they"d seen advertised and wanted to buy the next day.
I feel guilty because I think people should do something they really like to do in life. I should do something else, but there is nothing I can do really well. I"m established and make a steady living, so it becomes pretty easy. It"s not very fulfilling . . . but I"m lazy, I admit it. It"s an easier thing to do.
You stop thinking when you"re working. But it does take a lot of nervous energy because the camera goes one, two, three very fast, and you have to move very fast. There"s a kind of thinking about what you"re doing. If your left knee is at the right angle . . .
I usually don"t tell people that I model. I say I"m an actuary or something. You"re a celebrity because your picture is in a magazine or there"s the negative connotation. If strippers or wh.o.r.es are arrested, they usually say, "I"m a model." There"s also the thing about models being free and easy. I"ve never had the problem of men making pa.s.ses at me. I"ve always managed to maintain a distance. I would never have become a model had I known . . .
Mrs. Paley-what"s her name? Babs Paley-said the greatest thing is being very thin and very rich. I"m afraid that turns me off. I don"t like to look at my pictures. I don"t like to ride by and see some advertis.e.m.e.nt and tell everyone that"s me.
Most models, after one or two years, can"t be very interested in it. But they get involved with money, so it"s difficult for them to quit. And there"s always the possibility of the commercial that"s going to make you twenty thousand dollars at one crack. You can work very hard all year on photos and not make as much as you can on two television commercials.
Male models are even worse. They"re always talking about that lucky streak. They"re usually ex-beach boys or ex-policemen or ex-waiters. They think they"re going to get rich fast. Money and s.e.x are the big things in their life. They talk about these two things constantly. Money more than s.e.x, but s.e.x a lot. Dirty jokes and the fast buck. You see this handsome frame and you find it empty.
I go off into my own world most of the time. It"s difficult for me to talk with the others, because most people I work with are very conservative and play it safe. I usually get emotional, so since I"m not going to change them and they"re not going to change me, we sort of talk about everyday gossip. You end up smiling and being nice to everyone. You can"t afford not to be.
POSTSCRIPT: "When I visit that Baptist family back home, they ask if I drink and what do I drink. When I say, "Seven-Up," they don"t believe me. When I come home once a year, I try to make my people happy or bring them gifts. Probably like the guilty father who brings gifts for his children . . . "
ANNE BOGAN.
We"re on the thirty-second floor of a skysc.r.a.per, the office of a corporation president. She is his private secretary. The view of the river, railroad yards, bridges, and the city"s skyline is astonishing.
"I"ve been an executive secretary for eight years. However, this is the first time I"ve been on the corporate end of things, working for the president. I found it a new experience. I love it and I feel I"m learning a lot."
I become very impatient with dreamers. I respect the doers more than the dreamers. So many people, it seems to me, talk about all the things they want to do. They only talk without accomplishing anything. The drifters are worse than the dreamers. Ones who really have no goals, no aspirations at all, just live from day to day . . .