It’s the Year of Our Lord 2019, and Virgin Atlantic has decided it’s time to get rid of its policy that made wearing makeup mandatory for female flight attendants. In an added nod toward treating women as humans, the airline is also making trousers a standard part of their uniforms, rather than offering them only upon request.
Virgin said cabin crew could now work without makeup, if they choose, but were also more than welcome to follow the lipstick and foundation palette the airline set out in its guidelines. While the ability to not wear makeup may sound trite, buying and applying all that makeup costs time and money, which men don’t have to spend. Plus, being required to wear makeup plays into a retrograde idea of every female flight attendant as potential fodder for some man’s erotic fiction.
Mark Anderson, the airline’s executive vice president of customer service, said in a statement that the airline had been “listening to the views of our people” and “the new guidelines offer an increased level of comfort, they also provide our team with more choice on how they want to express themselves at work,” the Guardian reports.
Presumably the male flight attendants are now able to wear makeup and skirts as they see fit, just like their boss, Sir Richard Branson. It’s only fair.
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