When airlines first began hiring flight attendants in the 1930s, they weren’t looking for glamour. They wanted nurses. Boeing Air Transport, a forerunner of United Airlines, hired the first eight female “stewardesses” in 1930, all of them registered nurses. Their job was to reassure anxious passengers, handle airsickness, and provide first aid during turbulent flights.

By the 1950s, the profession had shifted from medical care to marketing image. Airlines began promoting a sleek, feminine ideal that reflected postwar advertising trends. A 1958 LIFE magazine article said applicants “should be between 21 and 26 years old, unmarried, reasonably pretty and slender, with a pleasant speaking voice.” Height and weight limits were strict, glasses were discouraged, and marriage or pregnancy often meant dismissal.

What began as a practical and even heroic role became a carefully curated symbol of hospitality in the sky, until new equality laws in the 1960s and 1970s finally dismantled those outdated rules.