SURPRISE IN THE SKY

A Stewardess Story From the Golden Age of Air Travel

In which a stewardess during the early sixties dons a supremely tight bodyshaper for the sake of beauty and a delicious sense of self-control.  But an unusual in-flight accident makes short shrift of that...

(copyright © 2003 by Roxy Katt.  Not to be reproduced in any manner, in whole or in
part, without the consent of the author.)

When I worked as a stewardess in the late fifties and early sixties one of my favourite co-workers was a woman by the name of Judy. Judy was one of the more experienced of the stewardesses, and seemed to be born for the job. She had the patience of Job and the kind of friendly, reassuring disposition that airlines prized so highly in a stewardess. She could keep her head in any situation and smile her big broad smile under the most trying of circumstances. She was highly intelligent, and very devoted to her work. It was easy to see how she had gotten the job.

Of course, it would be naive to say that at the time looks were not considered when airlines hired stewardesses, and Judy was no exception. Judy had the kind of full-figured hourglass shape that was so prized then. She was really quite stunning in our airline’s snug little rust coloured uniform. This uniform consisted of a tight skirt (down almost to the knee) a closely fitted jacket that buttoned firmly up to the neck with large brass buttons, a little red and white scarf, and a snappy little wedge cap. Judy would always pin her raven hair up tightly under the cap, and could never be seen without her makeup perfectly in place.

Of course, the notorious girdle was mandatory for stewardesses.  We had to supply those ourselves.

I remember one day when three of us, myself, Judy, and our friend Catherine, were having lunch at the airport cafeteria in Los Angeles prior to a flight. The subject of girdles came up. At that time, panty girdles were just getting started. Catherine and I had never worn one, and didn’t like the idea any more than the open-bottom types. For us, girdles of any kind were simply unpleasant fashion necessities. Judy, on the other hand, swore by panty girdles. As far as she was concerned, the open-bottom girdle was always riding up or shifting out of position somehow.

“The panty girdle stays in place,” she said, sucking on the straw of her milkshake. “I never use the open-bottomed type anymore.”

Judy was, in fact, the most tightly girdled stewardess I had ever met. She was one of those stewardesses for whom the uniform, especially the girdle, was a kind of armour and badge of honour she enjoyed and even exulted in. Whereas the rest of us would sometimes sleep late at our hotel rooms as long as we could get away with, rushing to get dressed to catch our plane, Judy always dressed slowly and methodically, as if to savour the experience and put herself in the right frame of mind for stewardessing.

“So,” asked Cat, “are you wearing a panty girdle right now?”

Judy shook her head. “Even better. A longleg bodyshaper. I swear by them. Look. Right here in this magazine I’m looking at is a picture of the exact same model I’m wearing.” She turned the magazine around and pushed it across the table for Cat to look at.

I had sometimes seen Judy in her shaper, for we had often shared a hotel room between flights. It was a bright white garment with a row of hooks and eyes down the left side and a zipper closing over that. It was pretty darned tight I can tell you, pulling her in narrowly at the waist and packing her in tightly in a very very close squeeze. She looked nice and smooth and fulsome in it. Every inch of her strained to burst out, but was firmly controlled by the garment’s confining grasp.

My argument for the open bottom girdle, as we sat merrily discussing the topic amongst ourselves, (but not too loudly, for there were pilots seated not far away) was that it was relatively easy to get into: you’d turn it inside out pull it part way up your thighs upside down by the lower hem, then grab the waist of it and pull that up, turning the girdle inside out again (making it right side out, in effect) and bringing it all up into place. And there you were: all snug in your little rubbery cocoon.

With Judy’s longleg shaper, on the other hand, even though there was a hook-and-eye-and-zipper thing down the left side you’d have to carefully tug and tug, first this way, then that, all the while careful not to put too much stress on it in the wrong direction or you would damage it.

“Sure,” said Judy, but once you get it on you know it’s not going anywhere. Open bottom girdles twist and ride, they spin your skirt around, there’s no end to all the tugging and twisting and wriggling you have to do all day just to stay looking nice.”

Cat looked at the magazine photo before her of a smiling model in Judy’s longleg shaper.

“I don’t like that little escape hatch thingy – it looks so uncomfortable.”

“Escape hatch?” Judy blinked. “Oh, you mean the convenience panel,” she smiled. “Well, I will admit, they do tend to make them tight there. Trying to pull it up between your legs and hook it shut is like hauling back on some super strong slingshot and trying not to let go. And I have such long fingernails for a strenuous and delicate operation like that...”

I laughed, but Cat remained unimpressed: “at least with the open bottom, you haven’t got something riding up against you there. I mean, I like the feeling of something covering me there but without pressing against it, you know?”

“That’s true,” said Judy, “but...” she stopped, slid aside her milkshake, and, glancing for a moment at the pilots nearby, leaned over the table towards us and spoke more lowly. You could tell this was about to be a moment of real girl talk, so to speak, and that one of us three decorous ladies was about to say something risque:  “You know, the first time I tried to get into this shaper, I just couldn’t close the convenience panel. I mean, after a few minutes of grappling with those little hooks with my long nails and the darned thing flying out of my hands like a rubber band I was on the verge of tears.” The two of us nodded eagerly at her to continue. “The rest of the shaper was just so exquisite but I just couldn’t get that part of it closed. I sat down and I said to myself calmly, ‘Judy, think this through. After years of trying this-and-that foundation garment, you’ve finally found the perfect body shaper. It makes you look and feel like a goddess. Now what, exactly, is the problem? Why does it fit perfectly all over but in this one place?’ And the answer came to me as plainly as if someone were right there talking to me: ‘Judy, you can get into it if you just keep trying. There’s nothing to worry about. The reason it’s difficult is very plain and one your boyfriend could have told you quite merrily: your little padoodly-doo is just too darned big. Now you cover it up like a lady and get your uniform on.’”

Cat and I shrieked with laughter. The men at the table looked, then looked away. “Oh my goodness, Judy,” I said, “really, you...”

“I mean it,” she said, in a low but very proper voice, “I’m very, er, fulsome down there. Well, practice makes perfect, and while it’s always a bit of a struggle, I can get the thing hooked shut. It isn’t actually that uncomfortable. You just hook it up nice and tight and you look smooth all over and feel all, well, nice and snuggley inside.”

I couldn’t help but giggle, just a little.

“But I’ve heard you can’t even pee through it anyway,” protested Cat.

“Sure you can,” Judy said, nibbling at her sandwich, “You just unhook it and make sure it’s well out of the way and then arch your bottom way back as much as you can. it’s fine. You should try it.”

“But if you have to go number two... I mean, surely you’re not going to wriggle out of that” pointing at the magazine picture, “in a tiny airplane washroom. By the time you were back into it the flight would be over.”

“So hold it in for a while. It won’t kill you.”

All this might give you the impression that we were very saucy young women, but nothing could be further from the truth. As any normal woman of that time can tell you, such conversations were nothing unusual between girls. In all but this intimate and private sphere, we were the perfect ladies we were expected to be, and Judy, not withstanding her occasional bawdy wit, was the most perfect lady of them all. For example, even though Judy’s boyfriend might indeed have been in a position to comment on the appearance of her “padoodly-doo,” both Cat and I knew full well that his own equipment was not allowed a more intimate acquaintance, if you know what I mean. This was still before the sexual revolution, after all, and good girls had their limits. Judy’s, we knew, were kissing, heavy petting, and, if the dear boy had behaved himself well and she was moved to compassion by the extent of his torment, some gentle manual relief of his burden. Judy was proud to be a virgin, and planned to stay that way until marriage, whenever that might come.

A glance at the clock showed us it was time to go. We grabbed our bags and went clickety-clacking on our heels to the plane.

We’d been airborne about an hour when Judy squeezed by me into the kitchen in the tail of the plane. It was just at that point I heard a little “boing” sound as she went by.  Judy stopped dead in her tracks.

“Damn.” She said.

“What? What is it?” I asked.

“Flaps are down.”

Huh? I was alarmed. For the airplane’s flaps to go down at this altitude would be a
disaster. I looked out the nearest window.

“No, you idiot,” she said laughing, just low enough for no passengers to hear. Both her hands were full of trays so she gestured down between her legs with her eyes. I still didn’t get it.

She walked into the kitchen. “My escape hatch popped open.”

“Your...? Oh, on your girdle,” I giggled.

“Yes, silly. Honestly, its so darned tight down there.”

“Maybe you should just fly flaps down. Are you expecting your period?”

“No, but I can’t do that. It just wouldn’t be, well, right somehow.  Time to re-pressurize the cabin.”

She went into the washroom to rectify the situation.

I turned and saw that Cat had just come up from behind and was staring at me strangely. She gestured at the little P.A. phone on the wall we used to make announcements to the passengers. The look on her face was one of complete horror.

I blanched. In pantomime, I mouthed the words, “oh my God, was it on?”

She bit her lip and nodded. I glanced up the aisle. The number of male faces looking back in our general direction and smiling in an unusually friendly way gave me to understand that our conversation had indeed been overheard.

Catherine turned the microphone off. It was understood we would never tell Judy.

But the passengers? When we served lunch, I went before Judy, serving drinks before she brought the food. I smiled my steeliest smile and looked daggers at any man who seemed the type to say anything. They smiled right back, but held their peace.

*****

The rest of the flight was uneventful until we were about halfway to Hawaii and serving tea and coffee. Some turbulence hit without warning. Cat was in the kitchen in the tail of the plane, and Judy was about halfway down the passenger compartment, moving towards the tail with a tray in her left hand. I was halfway between the two of them, facing Judy’s direction.

Judy had stopped to talk to an older woman seated in the aisle to her left. This was some sort of old peasant woman from eastern Europe I think, physically a very strong and sturdy sort, but a nervous flier. She had never been on a plane before, and more than once Judy or I had spoken to her to calm her fears. At the very moment we hit the unexpected air pocket, Judy was facing towards the tail of the plane, and she was just turning away from the old woman and about to walk down the aisle.

Judy rode out the bump with her usual aplomb, easily keeping her balance when the plane dropped, and when it surged up again, she allowed her knees to bend gracefully, taking up the force of the jolt. All the while she was smiling her stewardess smile, as if to advertise to the passengers that it was all nothing to worry about.

While Judy was the model of unruffled comportment, however, the old lady experienced a moment of panic. Her left arm shot out to grab the nearest thing it could find, and that just happened to be the hem of Judy’s skirt, above her left knee.

She must have hauled on the skirt at just the moment Judy’s knees had bent their deepest. The strain that bend would have put on the skirt, coupled with the fact it was tight to begin with, and the sturdy old lady’s desperate grab for security caused the unthinkable to happen: there was a  ripping sound, and Judy’s whole skirt came off right in the old lady’s hand.

Judy was standing there, looking like a model stewardess on a travel brochure from the waist up, her lovely big smile unruffled, every hair on her raven head in place. Below the waist, open to plain view, was the smooth, bright white, and clearly highly pressurized shaper.

But Judy didn’t notice!  Her cheerful and literally “chin up” comportment meant she was not looking down there anyway, and I suppose her shaper was so tight she didn’t feel the skirt come off. I gasped, and looked about me desperately for something I could grab to cover her with. The funny thing was -- though I’m ashamed to admit it -- that even though I was doing my level best to help her somehow, I couldn’t help thinking that this would be an interesting little anecdote to tell some day – with names changed to protect the innocent of course. Little did I suspect that the “anecdote” had one more little twist in its plot yet.

Judy, still smiling and with the tray in her left hand, walked a couple of steps forward and addressed a seated male passenger to her right. He had been having a little trouble with air sickness earlier.

“And how are you doing sir?” she said sweetly, “Feeling at all better?”

I didn’t quite catch his answer but I think it was something like “A-dah, a-ba-dah, a-ba...” She was standing before him in her girdled glory, one fist on her waist, with that graceful hips-forward pose that women don’t stand in anymore. She was just a step or two away from him, and her elegantly bulging “convenience panel” was more or less level with his eyes.

“Is there anything I can get you from the kitchen to help you feel better?” she smiled.

“A-dah, a-ba-dah, a-ba-dah...” he gave up and shook his head furiously.

I turned every which way, desperately looking again for some kind of blanket or discarded sweater I could grab for her. I couldn’t just rush up to her and say “Oh Judy, your girdle’s showing.” In stewardess school we were carefully trained how to deal with a difficult situation without causing panic. In the event of an upcoming crash landing, for example, you couldn’t just get on the P.A. and say to the passengers, “everybody, we’re going to crash. I’ll have some advice for you later.” Whenever you gave a necessary warning about a dangerous situation, you always had to follow that warning immediately with concrete, practical directions that even frightened passengers could follow. But that did not mean that I should walk up to Judy and say, “Judy, your girdle is showing. Now just stay calm and we’ll see if we can’t find something to cover you with.” No, it was up to me to find a covering, and fast. Judy was in a desperate situation and, poignantly, had no idea whatever.

“Well,” continued Judy, smiling at the passenger, “if you feel like eating later, I’m sure I can find something for you...”

Then suddenly, there was a twanging sound, as of someone firing off a large rubber band. Her face still turned towards the male passenger, Judy’s eyes suddenly unfocussed in confusion. This gave her normally alert and intelligent looking visage an appearance of acute stupidity.

“Huh?” she said, knowing something was wrong, but not what.

“Gleep!” was my own involuntary exclamation, like some sort of cartoon character, when I saw for myself what had occurred.

What was wrong was that the worst possible thing had happened: the escape hatch had popped open again – and I don’t mean the one on the plane. Judy was now flying with her flap down.

In the meantime, she refocused her momentarily dopey eyes as if some deep, inward assurance had informed her that nothing could possibly be wrong, that the strange and disturbing thing she had fleetingly imagined could not be possible, and need not be looked into. Her smile and feminine self-assurance returned.

But in the ongoing war between flesh and fabric, the bodyshaper had just lost, whether Judy knew it or not. Judy’s Judy had burst its appointed bounds and left its mistress in a most compromising position. Probably no man on the planet, barring Judy’s boyfriend or her gynecologist, had had such a clear and unobstructed view of that flourishing, plump, “padoodly-doo” and its verdant ebony fleece than did that male passenger at that particular moment. It hovered there innocently between two firmly white-girdled thighs, self-sufficient, unapologetic. Beneath the smiling, red-lipsticked face of the proudly civilized stewardess lay the unruly, bestial bush of primitive womanhood, its complacent dumb lips in fulsome repose, effortlessly mocking the powdered and perfumed sophistication of its oblivious bearer. I have said already that Judy was a highly intelligent woman. Of this there was never any doubt. But as a woman I am ashamed to say that as I regarded her gorgeous face smiling sweetly at her passenger and asking him if he was all right, the words which sprang unbidden to my lips in a low whisper were, “oh, you stupid cunt.”

The man seemed about to pass out. It is commonly thought by the vulgar that such a situation would be very heaven for a man, but this fellow, though he might ordinarily have been as appreciative of Judy’s charms as the next male, was really in a dreadful position. To ignore what was before his very eyes was impossible – to point it out to the smiling stewardess who was so devoted to his welfare was unthinkable.

As she opened her mouth to say something to the man, Judy happened to looked down.

“Perhaps you would feel better if I uuuuuWWEEEEEOOOOOOPPP!” The hysterical shriek filled the cabin; the tray went flying; a pair of female hands desperately fumbled to hide a recalcitrant and burgeoning womanhood. There was no small amount of unintelligible squawking and blubbering from the formerly poised model stewardess turned inadvertent girdle model and unwitting skyborne pudenda parade.

I had grabbed an abandoned shawl by then, and hustled forward to wrap Judy up in it and hustle her back to the kitchen. Leaving her bewildered and in the care of Cat, I returned for the skirt, which had neatly exploded down the back, from the waist and on down the zipper, all the way to the little slit at the back. The old lady was still holding it in her hand, looking at it disbelievingly.

I was a little worried the male passenger might be on the verge of a heart attack. As it was, he only asked for a glass of water, which he swallowed with incredible haste along with what I took to be some sort of tranquilizer.

Judy spent the rest of the flight in the bathroom. Fortunately, there was another one near the front of the plane the passengers could use. Cat and I each took turns attempting to console her in the bathroom while the other took care of the passengers. “There there,” I would say, giving her a hug as she sat on the (closed) toilet and passing her another kleenex, “it could happen to anybody.” Judy, for her part, kept saying over and over like a broken record, “but how could it just come open like that? I mean, how could it just, you know, just pop open? Okay, the first time it came open I thought I’d been careless but I know I was careful after that, I mean, I thought it was all hooked up, I mean, you’d think it would, I mean...” and so on. We both felt very sorry for her as we took turns wiping an inky black Niagara of mascara off her cheeks.

Judy eventually got over this trauma and returned to stewardessing. I remember it was quite a while later that I casually asked her, while she and Cat and I were eating lunch in the cafeteria at O’Hare, whether she had changed her mind about the panty girdle. She stopped chewing her ham sandwich for a moment, and then said simply, “no.”

“But what about...” asked Cat, smiling impishly, and pointing lightly down her own front.

Judy looked at us both. “You know how some people have to check the stove a dozen times before they’re ready to leave home?”

“Yes?” Cat and I said expectantly. There was a very long pause.

“With me it’s the front door. You can’t imagine how many times I make sure it’s locked before I go out.”

The three of us burst out laughing, causing several heads in the cafeteria to turn our way.

THE END

copyright © 2003 by Roxy Katt. Not to be reproduced in any manner, in whole or in part, without the consent of the author.

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