I read this New York Times article on the train coming home from the city the other day: Fired Flight Attendant Finds Blogs Can Backfire. Some excerpts:
Until two weeks ago, Ellen Simonetti worked as a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines, doing her best to project the image of a stewardess from a bygone era. “In the past people expected flight attendants to be young and attractive,” Ms. Simonetti, a 29-year old blonde, said from her home in Austin, Tex. “Maybe I represent the flight attendants of the past.”
But it is Ms. Simonetti’s very 21st-century activities that she says prompted Delta management to ground her, suspending her from flying in September and then firing her a month later.
Ms. Simonetti has operated a Web log since January, calling it Diary of a Flight Attendant, and she says she did not hear from Delta about the site, http://queenofsky.journalspace.com, until after she posted a set of provocative photos of herself in her Delta uniform. In one photograph, her skirt is hiked to mid-thigh as she perches along a seatback on an empty airliner. In another, she is leaning over the seats, her blouse unbuttoned, exposing part of her bra. Ms. Simonetti said she posted those photographs because she thought they made her look pretty.
And that, my friends, is why in this this blog you’ll find no sexy photos of me with my breasts or bra slightly exposed in my place of work.
But seriously, I think it’s pretty ridiculous that Queen of Sky was fired for these photos. I think there is a double standard at play. Had she been a man, it probably would not have been an issue.
