Fly With Me review: How 'Barbie doll' air stewardesses battled outrageous 1970s sexism, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Fly with Me (PBS America)

Has there ever been a more sexually suggestive ad campaign? 'I'm Judy,' smiled the blonde stripping down to her bikini in the Florida sunshine.

'You can fly me morning, afternoon or night. Just say when!' And as she ran down the beach to the sea, a screencard urged: 'Fly Judy. Fly National. Call your travel agent.'

'I hated that. It was pretty close to 'f*** me'. It was really an insult,' said former flight attendant Kathleen Heenan, on Fly With Me, a documentary that tells how air stewardesses were in the vanguard of the 1970s feminist movement.

They seemed unlikely warriors for women's rights. 'Barbie dolls revolt!' gasped one headline, as cabin crew on the U.S. airline TWA announced a strike.

'Women's liberation has reared its pretty head in the skies,' warned another reporter. 'The question is whether or not a stewardess is a flying waitress, a sex object or a safety expert. They seem to be a little bit of all three.'

In the U.S. after the Second World War, women sought out jobs as airline stewardesses (pictured) as a way to find adventure

Much of the fascination of this two-part history lesson was seeing how casually outrageous the treatment was of women at work, half a century ago. Applicants for jobs as 'cabin girls' with United Airlines, for instance, had to be aged between 21 and 26, unmarried, between 5'2' and 5'8', weigh between 105lb and 135lb (seven stone seven and nine stone nine), and be 'well-proportioned'.

Getting pregnant was a sackable offence. So was getting married. Most employers dismissed stewardesses when they turned 35 — though some set the limit at 32. When an exception to this rule was introduced, it was dubbed the 'grandmother clause'.

Eastern Airlines even boasted about this, with an advert called 'Meet the losers'. It featured a parade of women who failed to match their exacting standards: 'She's awkward . . . She's not very friendly . . . She wears glasses.'

TWA introduced provocative paper uniforms with an international twist: the 'English wench', the 'Italian toga', the 'French cocktail' and the 'Manhattan penthouse'. Unsurprisingly, some male passengers assumed this was an invitation to grope.

Yet these young women, regarded as so compliant, docile and dim, were also expected to perform heroics. With airliners commandeered by the U.S. Army to transport troops in and out of Vietnam, they regularly flew into the war zone, coming under fire.

And with hijacks and terrorist alerts a frequent occurence, they often had to shepherd panicking passengers during an evacuation. One described how, after her plane was emptied by a bomb scare, the pilot sent her back on board to cook his dinner.

The marvel is that stewardesses endured this treatment for so long without hijacking a few planes themselves. Even when they did fight back, their tactics were low-key — all of them wearing wedding rings, for instance, to protest the prohibition on marriage.

How different it was for female crew on British services, we didn't find out. 'I'm Mavis . . . I'm Brenda . . . fly me' — that doesn't strike the same note.