Air hostesses took to the skies in the 1930s, proud and excited to have the most glamorous job in the world. This was a job like no other-filled with adventure, shiny new technology, and work that was thrilling, demanding and exhausting. Young women flocked in droves to be measured, weighed, and squeezed into snappy uniforms. Smile, Particularly in Bad Weather tells the story of the development of this pioneering profession. It describes the shift from the 1930s, when the girl-next-door took to the air with a great degree of bravado, through to the 1960s and the 'coffee, tea or me?' stereotype, where airlines sexualised the air hostess as a point of marketing difference. The book then covers the crucial period where air hostesses fought back, no longer wanting to be stereotyped nor discriminated against in terms of fair working conditions. The job of air stewardess shaped working women to become something more, it tested their independence, it encouraged self-enhancement and sophistication, and it took them to places they hadn't dreamt about.--back cover
Abstract This article uses family photographs to discuss the labour of home dressmaking in Australia in the 1960s. These images reveal the products of this domestic labour in garments of economy and style and allude to the affective labour associated with the socialization of girls. The clothes produced by mothers for their daughters can be viewed as a performative act of mothering at that time. Drawing on conversations, discussions and interviews with their mothers and other women from the 1960s, the authors demonstrate the value of personal narratives, beyond individual subjectivity, as a way of opening out the broader and more complex historical and social process of their everyday lives.
Why is it that we watch Mad Men and think it represents a period? Flashes of patterned wallpaper, whiskey neat, babies born that are never mentioned, contact lining for kitchen drawers, Ayn Rand, polaroids, skinny ties, Hilton hotels, Walter Cronkite, and a time when Don Draper can ask 'What do women want?' and dry old Roger Sterling can reply 'Who Cares?' This essay explores the embrace of period detail in Mad Men finding it to be both loving and fetishistic, and belonging, like all period film, to the politics of the present.
In 1965 Diana Rigg, aka Mrs Emma Peel, burst onto English television screens in the 'spy-fi' series The Avengers (Roy Baker, 1965) wearing, amongst other things, a skin-tight black vinyl catsuit. Her costumes offered a visual excess which reinforced the effects of the series' highly stylized mise-en-scène. This visual excess was also played out in public life, where Mrs Peel's clothes were available in retail outlets, and Diana Rigg as exemplary modern woman wore some of the styles both as public obligation and private pleasure. This article outlines the way the catsuit, as worn by Mrs Peel, is part of a technological nexus: its fabrication, its implicit and imminent activity and its sexual narrative. In her catsuit Mrs Peel represents and manifests the modern technological body, and this clothed body became central to conflict in The Avengers' narrative. But despite being strapped to a drainpipe or bound into a catsuit Mrs Peel was always firmly in control.
THE COLLECTED BONY BULLETINS: ORIGINAL AND COMPLETE, COMPILED BY CLAUDIA STONE (2007) Tucson, Arizona: Corgi Publishing, 225 pp., ISBN: 0979286603, 9780979286605, Paperback, Copies of The Collected Bony Bulletins are available from the compiler, Claudia Stone: 500 N. AvenidaVenado, Tucson, AZ 85748 USA; email: c.stonecox.net THE BEACH OF ATONEMENT, ARTHUR UPFIELD ([1930] 2007) Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com, 298 pp., ISBN: 9781430325383, Paperback, US$40.00 ARTHUR W. UPFIELD: LIFE AND TIMES OF BONY'S MAN, ANDREW MILNOR (2008) Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 245 pp., ISBN: 1847185576, 9781847185570, Hardback, GBP34.99, US$52.99 UP AND DOWN AUSTRALIA: SHORT STORIES, ARTHUR UPFIELD, EDITED BY KEES DE HOOG, (2008) Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com, 300 pp., ISBN: 9781847994134, Paperback, US$24.96 UP AND DOWN AUSTRALIA AGAIN: MORE SHORT STORIES, ARTHUR UPFIELD, EDITED BY KEES DE HOOG (2009) Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com, 300 pp., ISBN: 9781445229843, Paperback, US$24.95 UP AND DOWN THE REAL AUSTRALIA: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ARTICLES AND THE MURCHISON MURDERS, ARTHUR UPFIELD, EDITED BY KEES DE HOOG (2009) Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com, 248 pp., ISBN: 9871409255840, Paperback, US$22.97 WHEN BONY WAS THERE: A CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND CAREER OF DETECTIVE INSPECTOR NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, KEES DE HOOG (2010) Raleigh, NC: Lulu.com, 47 pp., ISBN: 9781445766195, Paperback, US$11.95 DETECTIVE INSPECTOR NAPOLEON BONAPARTE: HIS LIFE AND TIMES, MICHAEL DUKE (2010) Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 262 pp., ISBN: 1443823759, Hardback, GBP39.99, US$59.99 GRIPPED BY DROUGHT, ARTHUR UPFIELD ([1932] 2011) Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com, 292 pp., ISBN: 9781446627341, Hardback, US$42.95 A ROYAL ABDUCTION, ARTHUR UPFIELD ([1932] 2011) Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com, Forthcoming APPLY WITHIN: STORIES OF CAREER SABOTAGE, MICHAELA MCGUIRE (2009) Carlton: Melbourne University Publishing, 208 pp., ISBN: 9780522855890, Paperback, AUD $27.99 IMPACT OF THE MODERN: VERNACULAR MODERNITIES IN AUSTRALIA 1870S-1960S, ROBERT DIXON AND VERONICA KELLY (2008) Sydney: Sydney University Press, 308 pp., ISBN 9781920898892, Paperback, Aus$49.95 GLAMOUR: WOMEN, HISTORY, FEMINISM, CAROL DYHOUSE (2010) London and New York: Zed Books, 198 pp., ISBN 9781848134072, Hardback, Aus$44.95, ISBN 9781848138612, Paperback, Aus$19.95
Abstract This article consists of a number of thoughts about and meditations on men's underpants. Beginning with a 'day in the life' of a standard pair of underpants, it moves on to explore some of the specific characteristics that accompany the wearing of this particular garment. There follows a consideration of the role played by underpants in the creation of male characters for screen and television. A brief look at Homer Simpson's Y-fronts is followed by the examination of a crucial moment in the history of Australian undergarments, namely the move from wool to cotton as the chief material of their manufacture. After an exploration of the humour that is often associated with men's underpants the article finishes with a series of recollections that show how undergarments can be folded into the most intimate of memories.
