By Maurice Tomlinson
Virgin airlines recently announced that it was amending its uniform policy to allow all staff to dress as they identify. This includes males assigned at birth wearing skirts. Such a radical departure from my painful experience as a gay flight attendant with Air Jamaica gave a me immense hope for the future.
When I was growing up and other boys played sports like soccer, I preferred my own invented game of “aeroplane” where I set up the chairs on my parents’ verandah like a cabin and treated my stuffed animals to “coffee or tea” and “chicken or beef.” But my wish to be a flight attendant seemed impossible because at the time Air Jamaica, only employed women in that role. The women were also given the sexist title of “rare tropical birds” and adorned in vibrant magenta, orange, yellow outfits.
Fresh out of university I was therefore ecstatic to see that the national airline had liberalized its employment policy and I landed my dream job as a flight attendant, one of only three men hired in that role. The vetting process was quite vigorous, I think partly to ensure that that none of us were gay. I was deeply in the closet at the time and even had a girlfriend so, I thought that I was “passing.” Even so, one day during inflight training I asked our manager if instead of the bland white shirts that the men were issued, we could sport pastel-coloured shirts that hinted at the bright colours worn by our female colleagues. I was met with a resounding NO as our boss did not want any passengers assuming that us men were gay! Imagine that. Gay flight attendants. Unheard of!
Once I started flying my dream soon became a nightmare. Even though I was not “out” at work, or to myself for that matter, I was soon shunned by many of my co-workers because of my suspected homosexuality. My most memorable instances were on the company bus that took us to the airport. Whenever I boarded there were usually several rows of seats between me and the other flight crew as no one wanted to sit next to me. I was also banned from the cockpit as pilots did not want a gay man serving them.
But, despite all these microaggressions I loved the job and received regular passenger letters of commendation. I was even encouraged by the airline’s first woman pilot who saw me in the crew scheduling department one day and told me to keep my head up and not let the bullies win as she had faced similar struggles when she first joined the airline.
However, I finally quit when one day after a flight my boss took me into her office and advised me that some passengers were complaining that I looked gay. Her “solution” was that I needed to stand in front of a mirror and try to act more macho. I resigned on the spot as it hit me: because of who I was my boss and many of my colleagues would not have my back in an emergency. And it was drummed into us during training that the principal role of flight attendants was to work collaboratively during emergencies.
Air Jamaica no longer exists but our national obsession with vilifying LGBT people rages on, including visceral and sometime deadly attacks against anyone who transgresses the rigid gender binary! I therefore pray that Virgin’s skirted air stewards experience a much less turbulent flight path than I endured, and most importantly, a safe landing in Jamaica!
