British Airways - lipstick

[foolishpeach]

I just caught up on last week's A Very British Airline, and I am really that Jodie was kicked off the training course for not reapplying her lipstick often enough.

The stupid prat who fired her didn't seem to be wearing any lipstick and neither did any of the male recruits.

It is just another example of standards being different and more onerous for women.

[BriarRainbowshimmer]

The whole thing sounds very 1960's or earlier.
I don't understand the point of the clown lipstick they have to wear.
I don't give a crap if they're wearing a make-up or not I just want a safe journey.
Is it so the passengers can be 100% sure that these people are actual women not male? Or is it because some men are lipstick fetishists and need to be horny while on the plane?

[itsbetterthanabox]

It bloody awful. Of course they aren't going to be as good or experienced. They are only hiring 'mixed flight' crew so that they can pay them poorly and give them less job benefits than their existing employees. I will never use BA again.
Putting these people through six weeks unpaid training with no guarantee of a job is a joke. Workers don't deserve that shit.
All the things they got snapshots for were silly little things that don't matter but the makeup, clothes, hair and heels on the women was the worst part. It was so unfair and literally has nothing to do with being good cabin crew. I'm not sure how it isn't sex discrimination tbf.

[TheXxed]

I'm really glad that I am not the only one who felt this way. This may sound strange but I was really upset by how they treated their staff.

A lot of the recruits had to leave jobs, save, buy expensive uniforms all to be shafted in their new contracts.

I wish employers would see their staff as an investment and instead of creating a climate of fear with snapshots .

[grimbletart]

There's article and picture in today's Daily Torygraph about a father and daughter who are pilots for BA, saying there were father and son combinations but rarely father and daughter.

I bet BA don't tell he to repair her lippie every few minutes and totter around in high heels.

[DinoSnores]

"Why do you think women wouldn't be suitable DinoSores?"

Of course I don't think women wouldn't be suitable overall, but if they are only getting a tiny number of female applicants, they can't just appoint them because they are female to reach some 50% target!

There are much bigger reasons why women aren't going into aviation as pilots. Far fewer women do physics at school, for example. Young girls/women don't see being a pilot as a career for them. This is where things need to change, rather than imposing Affirmative Action blindly.

[tribpot]

I bet BA don't tell he to repair her lippie every few minutes

Well taking the statement that makeup is required to confer authority (in women) the pilot should be even more made up than the cabin crew.

[CrotchMaven]

What background do commercial pilots usually have?

I still want to know if the female grooming thing comes at a cost to the employee and if that is reflected in salary. Anyone know?

[joanofarchitrave]

Yes the pilot should really be including curling her eyelashes in the pre-flight check to give her that 'wide-awake' look.

[GrannyOnTheSchoolRun]

I didn't see the programme because I dont live in the Uk but I will say as the mother and mother in law of flight deck crew, an aircraft engineer and cabin crew, that I would only ever want to board an aircraft and see them all turned out immaculately - and that includes the men as well.

It fosters a sense of all is well and that can only be a good thing when boarding an aircraft.

And as an aside my daughter was once the grooming officer for an airline as part of her job as a station manager and I sincerely doubt a person would lose their job because of their lipstick; and all the more-so if the proceedings were part of a TV show.

[GrannyOnTheSchoolRun]

I dont really know love cos none of them had hairy legs.

[CrotchMaven]

Heh, heh, heh @ "grooming officer".
WTF did that involve?

Being turned out immaculately is fine. It's the differing standards relating to "Immaculately" that we're discussing.

[CrotchMaven]

I'll bet my horse that the men did.

[tribpot]

Grooming officer could perhaps brush hair (head and legs) and do nice plaits (ditto)?

[ChunkyPickle]

I used to feel that positive discrimination and quotas were an awful idea, but I'm starting to come round to them - and here's my reasoning.

In a shop, you put one of each on display - ie. if something comes in 6 colours, you make sure that the customer can see the 6 colours. Jobs need to be like that. How else will it permeate into the heads of children that they can be a pilot no matter their sex/colour/looks unless they see people of both sexes, all colours, attractive and less so doing the job? You can talk about it until you're blue in the face, but if you've only ever seen male pilots and female cabin crew then that's what you will think of when looking for a job.

If you don't display a red ipod, then you won't sell many because no-one will know to ask for one. ie. it's self-fulfilling.

I have high hopes for the BBC's 'no all-male panel show' rule because I think that once young women see more female comedians, they will realise it's an option.

[LoveSardines]

You don't need to study physics to become a pilot do you?

Astronaut, yes.

[LoveSardines]

here british airways training page (which has a woman in a cockpit as their picture btw):

You will need:

5 GCSEs at Grade C or above, including English Language, Mathematics and a Science (single or double award), excluding General Studies.
PLUS

either 3 A-Levels at Grades BBC or above, excluding General Studies and Critical thinking.
or an Honours Degree at 2:2 (or higher) or a pass (or above) in a higher degree such as MSc, MA, MPhil, DPhil, PhD, MBA.

So it doesn't seem to me that girls are being limited at all there due to not taking stem subjects.

I suspect they don't apply as they don't see it as an option.

There was stuff on the BBC recently about how shite careers advice still is, a real shame.

[LoveSardines]

anyone fancy a career change?

"This unique programme is open to any aspiring pilots who will be between the ages of 18 – 55 on 1st September 2014. Aspiring pilots from school leavers to those changing career are all very welcome to apply."

[whatdoesittake48]

I agree chunky. Affirmative action need only be for one generation until it I s firmly embedded. I would love to see more female role models for my children and it wont happen until a 50 percent rule us in place. Of course that also means half of all cleaners nurses etc need to be men.
.

[LoveSardines]

sorry off track

yes of course it is sexist and also bizarre. airline stewards and makeup counter people are the only ones expected to confirm (on pain of job loss) to an ideal of 60 years ago. Why? I mean really who gives a fuck if the women have lipstick?

I suppose it's a uniform thing and they want everyone to look as near as identical as possible like they're doing the trooping of the colour or something (again, why?), so if women are going to wear lipstick then it all has to be the same colour, i guess that's the thinking? they could give them an option of this colour or none I would have thought.

I mean when I go into a shop with unformed staff it doesn't utterly freak me out if two females have different lipstick or 2 males have different sideburns.

Who is all this massive identikit conformity or else for?

[tribpot]

I suspect it's not a family friendly career

Agreed - although noted above, pilots and cabin crew have the same schedule and it doesn't deter many female cabin crew (in fairness I know there are cabin crew with children but it's less common, I would bet). So whilst us old gimmers might struggle to blend piloting and family life, the sprightly twenty somethings have no excuse except perhaps a desire to wearing authority-conferring lipstick

[sashh]

Anyone know which (if any) airlines have less extreme appearance requirement?

Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the airline but I flew to/from Verona changing flights in Germany. UK-Germany was Lufthansa then the second flight was a small Italian airline. One of the flight attendants was in trousers, flat shoes and a wraparound cardigan - all uniform.

I'm a bit of a fan of 'aircraft investigations' and on one of those they interviewed a flight attendant who had survived a crash (it might have been the one that went in to the potomac) and someone gave her a coat or a blanket which she put on. One of the airline managers saw her and told her to take it off because it wasn't uniform.