Air Male: Exploring Flight Attendant Masculinities in North America and Thailand

Flight attendant work, although now referred to with gender-neutral terminology, continues to be archetypically feminine. Male flight attendants are often assumed to be gay, which frequently includes an emasculated, hyper-sexualised dimension to the stereotyped minority within the female-dominated occupation. The ways in which straight men navigate this occupation and its gendered/hypersexualised connotations problematises both the notions of a gay community as well as flight attendant work as inherently or necessarily feminine. Based on ethnography amongst flight attendants who work for two international airlines, this paper considers how notions of masculinity and heteronormativity operate in a feminised occupational role and how workplace dynamics affect gendered senses of self and relations with others, including with coworkers and in the public.     

Winyann and Affective Performance among Female Thai Flight Attendants

Building on Hochschild's concept of emotional work and Sarah Ahmed's theory of affective economy, this paper examines the ways in which female Thai flight attendants mobilise winyann—a Buddhist notion of soul, but applied to airline professionalism—to perform their duties and manage work-related crises. Ethnographic evidence shows that Buddhist concepts of soul and suffering are used to transcend difficult situations in the air, paradoxically creating value for the corporation while still allowing women to experience personal integrity through embodied performances of affect in their professional lives.