Singapore Girl: Icon, Anachronism, Winged Geisha and Pretty Young Thing
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 11.13.02 | 12:35 AM ET
Singapore Airlines is one of the world’s great airline success stories—never in 30 years has it failed to turn a profit, and for 14 out of the last 15 years the readers of Travel + Leisure have named it their favorite international carrier.
A big reason for its success? The flight attendants, aka Singapore Girls. “She’s a winged geisha, a tea-party animal, a pretty young thing in a form-fitting sarong,” USA Today reporter Jayne Clark writes of the Singapore Girl. “She’s also an anachronism of sorts, harkening back to an era when being a stewardess wasn’t just a job, it was a lifestyle.”
Clark covers some interesting cultural ground in the piece, including weight, hair and makeup regulations for Singapore Girls that “raise doubts about whether Western sensibilities could ever fit that snug Pierre Balmain-designed sarong kebaya that is her signature garb.”
Email to friend
Twitter
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! Buzz
Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
