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Back in 1971, National Airlines ran a TV spot that featured its young and attractive flight attendants chirping a tagline destined for infamy. “I’m Maggie—fly me,” said one pearly toothed maiden. The “girls,” as Time reported, were also required to wear “Fly me” buttons on their uniforms. When some of the nervier ones complained that “Fly me” was little more than an artful way of saying “Screw me,” National executives shrugged their shoulders: “The stewardesses,” said National’s PR director Robert Mattel, “[have] become an extension of the airline.”
Mattel—who denied all charges of misogyny—was speaking for his industry and, judging from the ads on these pages, he still could be.
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