SYA 4010

312 :: SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA

among social exchange, commodification of feel­ ing, and the premium, in many middle-class jobs, on the capacity to manage meanings.

Conventionalized feeling may come to assume the properties of a commodity. When deep gestures of exchange enter the market sec­ tor and are bought and sold as an aspect of labor power, feelings are commodified. When the manager gives the company his enthusiastic faith, when the airline stewardess gives her pas­ sengers her psyched-up but quasi-genuine reas­ suring warmth, what is sold as an aspect of labor power is deep acting.

But commodification of feeling may not have equal salience for people in every social class or occupational sector. When I speak of social class, it is not strictly income, education, or occupational status that I refer to, but to some­ thing roughly correlated to these-the on-the-job task of creating and sustaining appropriate mean­ ings. The bank manager or the IBM executive may be required to sustain a definition of self, office, and organization as "up-and-coming" or "on the go," "caring," or "reliable," meanings most effectively sustained through acts upon feeling. Feeling rules are of utmost salience in jobs such as these; rule reminders and sanctions are more in play. It is not, as Erich Fromm and C. Wright Mills suggest, that the modem middle­ class man "sells" his personality but that many jobs call for an appreciation of display rules, feeling rules, and a capacity for deep acting.

Working-class jobs more often call for the individual's external behavior and the products ofit-a car part assembled, a truck delivered 500 miles away, a road repaired. The creation and the sustaining of meanings go on of course, but it is not what the boss pays for. Some working- or lower-class jobs do require emotion work-the

jobs of prostitute, servant, nanny, and eldercare worker, for example. Such workers are espe­ cially important as a source of insight about emotion management. Being less rewarded for their work than their superiors, they are, perhaps, more detached from, and perceptive about it. Just as we can learn more about "appropriate situa­ tion-feeling fits" by studying misfits, we can probably understand commodification of feeling better from those who more often have to ask themselves: Is this what I do feel or what I have to feel?

Why, I asked, do we feel in ways appropriate to the situation as much of the time as we do? One answer is because we try to manage what we feel in accordance with latent rules. In order to elaborate this suggestion I considered first the responsiveness of emotion to acts of manage­ ment as it is treated in the organismic and inter­ active account of emotion.

Still, occasionally emotions come over us like an uncontrollable flood. We feel overcome with grief, anger, or joy. lns(?far as emotion is, as Dar­ win suggests, a substitute for action, or action­ manque, we may become enraged instead of killing, envious instead of stealing, depressed instead of dying. Or, yet again, emotion can be a prelude to action-and we become so enraged that we kill, so envious that we steal, so depressed that we die. Newspapers make a business of recording emotions of this sort. But the other half of the human story concerns how people calm down before they kill someone, how people want something but don't steal it, how people put the bottle of sleeping pills away and call a friend. Just how it is we hold, shape, and-to the extent we can-direct feeling is not what we read about in the newspaper. But it may be the really important news.

Introduction to The Managed Heart

While in the previous reading Hochschild singled out class position as a central determi­ nate of the commodification of feelings, in this chapter from The Managed Heart (1983), she turns her attention to the effects of gender relations on emotion management. If mem­ bers of the lower and working classes tend more to things than to people, and thus are less practiced in the skills of emotional labor, the hierarchical patterning of managing emotions is reversed when it comes to gender. In other words, while the occupations associated with

Symbolic Interactionism and Dramaturgy 1111 313

nanny, and eldercare h workers are espe­ rce of insight about ng less rewarded for ors, they are, perhaps, :rceptive about it. Just ut "appropriate situa­ ring misfits, we can 1odification of feeling >re bften have to ask io feel or what I have

!l in ways appropriate ,f the time as we do? e try to manage what 1 latent rules. In order 1 I considered first the n to acts of manage~ organismic and inter~

:ions come over us like 've feel overcome with : as emotion is, as Dar~ , for action, or action~ te enraged instead of, of stealing, depressed,; gain, emotion can be a ,• re become so enraged .•· .t we steal, so depressed ~ make a business ofJ tis sort. But the othe'r ' concerns how peoplf

ll someone, how people . steal it, how people put.· : away and call a friencl(· ape, and-to the exten{:; is not what we 'read}

3ut it may be the reallf

)n as a central deternu? Managed Heart (1983} a management. If merµ ,eople, and thus are le~ g of managing emotioif 1pations associated wi

the more advantaged classes (flight attendants, sales workers, teachers, lawyers, health care providers, etc.) are more likely to require the manipulation of personal feelings, it is women, the less-advantaged gender, who more often find it necessary to be skilled emotion managers and thus who are more susceptible to the commodification of their feelings. As you will read, Hochschild attributes these differences in the emotional lives of men and women to the unequal distribution of money, power, authority, and status. As a result, in their private lives, "women make a resource out of feeling and offer it to men as a gift in return for the more material resources they lack" (ibid.:163). Emotion work is central to how to be, and what it means to be, a wife, a mother, and a woman. Meanwhile, men and women are typically called on to perform different types of emotional labor because of the gendered nature of occupations. This, too, carries with it a number of consequences that make the managing of feelings a different business for women and for men.

The Managed Heart (1983)

Arlie Russell Hochschild

GENDER, STATUS, AND FEELING lack. ... Thus their capacity to manage feeling and to do "relational" work is for them a more

More emotion management goes on in the fami­ important resource. Second, emotion work is

lies and jobs of the upper classes than in those of important in different · ways for men · and for

the lower classes. That is, in the class system, women. This is because ~ach gender tends to be

social conditions conspire to make it more prev­ called on to do different kinds of this

alent at the top. In the gender system, on the work. ... This specialization of emotional labor other hand, the reverse is true: social conditions in the marketplace rests on the different child­

make it more prevalent, and prevalent in differ­ hood training of the heart that is given to girls

ent ways, for those at the bottom-women. In and to boys. ("What are little · girls made of?

what sense is this so? And why? Sugar and spice and everything nice. What are

Both men and women do emotion work, in little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy

life and at work. In all kinds of ways, dog tails.") Moreover, each specialization· pres­

as well as women get into the spirit of the ents men and women with different emotional try to escape the grip of hopeless love, try tasks. Women are more likely to be presented

pull themselves out of depression, try to allow with the task of mastering anger and aggression But in the whole realm of emotional expe­ in the service of "being nice." To men, the

is emotion work as important for men as socially assigned task of aggressing against those

is for women? And is it important in the same that break rules of various sorts creates the pri­

I believe that the answer to both questions vate task of mastering fear and vulnerability.

No. The reason, at bottom, is the fact that Third, and less noticed, the general subordi­

. . in general have far less independent nation of women leaves every individual woman

/access to money, power, authority, or status in with a weaker. "status shield" against the dis­

society. They are a subordinate social stratum, placed feelings of others.... The fourth conse­ ,Cand this has four consequences. quence of the power difference between the

sexes is that for each gender a different portion , •·• ·.... First, lacking other resources, women make a ;;,resource out of feeling and offer it to men as a of the managed heart is enlisted for commercial · gift in return for the more material resources they use. Women more often react to subordination by

Excerpts from The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling by Arlie Russell Hochschild. Copyright© 1983 by The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with permission of the University of California Press, via Copyright Clearance Center.

314 RI SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA

making defensive use of sexual beauty, charm, and relational skills. For them, it is these capaci­ ties that become most vulnerable to commercial exploitation, and so it is these capacities that they are most likely to become estranged from. For male workers in "male" jobs, it is more often the capacity to wield anger and make threats that is delivered over to the company, and so it is this sort of capacity that they are more likely to feel estranged from. After the great transmutation, then, men and women come to experience emo­ tion work in different ways ....

Women as Emotion Managers

Middle-class American women, tradition sug­ gests, feel emotion more than men do. The defi­ nitions of "emotional" and "cogitation" in the Random House Dictionary of the English Lan­ guage reflect a deeply rooted cultural idea. Yet women are also thought to command "feminine wiles," to have the capacity to premeditate a sigh, an outburst of tears, or a flight of joy. In general, they are thought to manage expression and feeling not only better but more often than men do. How much the conscious feelings of women and men may differ is an issue I leave aside here. However, the evidence seems clear that women do more emotion managing than men. And because the well-managed feeling has an outside resemblance to spontaneous feeling, it is possible to confuse the condition of being more "easily affected by emotion" with the action of willfully managing emotion when the occasion calls for it.

Especially in the American middle class, women tend to manage feeling more because in general they depend on men for money, and one

of the various ways of repaying their debt is to do teem extra emotion work-especially emotion "sec, that affirms, enhances, and celebrates the well­ misli being and status of others. When the emotional rathe skills that children learn and practice at home · S, move into the marketplace, the emotional · toth, of women becomes more prominent because worn in general have not been trained to make their men emotions a resource and are therefore less is a 1 to develop their capacity for managing feeling. "abo

There is also a difference in the kind of offst tion work that men and women tend to do. thet studies have told us that women adapt more how the needs of others and cooperate more than=••-'"'•'"· out, do. These studies often imply the existence the t gender-specific characteristics that are at clc if not innate. But do these characteristics lesce exist passively in women? Or are they signs date, social work that women do-the work of affirm­ feeli1 ing, enhancing, and celebrating the well-being do it and status of others? I believe that much of agrei time, the adaptive, cooperative woman is <>rr'""''" need working at showing deference. This deference then requires her to make an outward display A Leslie Fiedler. has called the "seriously" gooq prod1 girl in her and to support this effort by evoking defer feelings that make the "nice" display of it. natural.i Women who want to put their own feel­ with ings less at the service of others must still con, dent~ front the idea that if they do so, they will andr considered less "feminine." these

... The emotional arts that women have profi: tivated are analogous to the art of feigning stud) Lionel Trilling has noted among those (1971 wishes outdistance their opportunities for psycl advancement. As for many others oflower OUS C it has been in the woman's interest to be the bet0 ''non ter actor.ii As the psychologists would say, ated'

feeli1 adult and l behir

iFiedler ( 1960) suggests that girls are trained to be "seriously" good and to be ashamed of being bad she i: boys are asked to be good in formalistic ways but covertly invited to be ashamed of being "too" Oversocialization into "sugar-and-spice" demeanor produces feminine skills in delivering deference.

mThe iiOther researchers have found men to have a more "romantic" orientation to love, women a more

fore d orientation. That is, males may find cultural support for a passive construction of love, for seeing themselves as

they c "falling head over heels," or ''walking on air." According to Kephart, "the female is not pushed hither and yo· by her romantic compulsions. On the contrary, she seems to have a greater measure of rational control over h i'Beci romantic inclinations than the male" (1967, p. 473). thanr

mying their debt is to do/ pecially emotion work/ ind celebrates the well/ rs. When the emotional·.. 1 and practice at horn~ tee, the emotional labor prominent because meii n trained to make their are therefore less likely for managing feeling .... ,•.·. mce in the kind of emor:\ vomen tend to do. Many;; t women adapt more toj ooperate more than met(; imply the existence of\

ristics that are inevitable : ;e characteristics simply} 1? Or are they signs of a do-the work of affinn~' ebrating the well-being': ,elieve that much of the: rative woman is actively ference. This deferenqe outward display of wha( :d the "seriously" goog rt this effort by Pururn,o ! "nice" display mt to put their own ::if others must still 1ey do so, they will 1e." ts that women have , the art of feigning ed among those , opportunities for ny others oflower 11's interest to be the 1ologists would say,

tmed of being bad med of being "too" 1ering deference.

, women a mo re, for seeing t ; not pushed hither an of rational control ov

techniques of deep acting have unusually high "secondary gains." Yet these skills have long been mislabeled "natural," a part of woman's "being" rather than something of her own making.iii

Sensitivity to nonverbal communication and to the micropolitical significance offeeling gives women something like an ethnic language, which men can speak too, but on the whole less well. It is a language women share offstage in their talk "about feelings." This talk is not, as it is for men offstage, the score-keeping of conquistadors. It is the talk of the artful prey, the language of tips on how to make him want her, how to psyche him out, how to put him on or tum him off. Within the traditional female subculture, subordination at close quarters is understood, especially in ado­ lescence, as a "fact of life." Women accommo­ date, then, but not passively. They actively adapt feeling fo a need or a purpose at hand, and they do it so that it seems to express a passive state of agreement, the chance occurrence of coinciding needs. Being becomes a way of doing. Acting is the n~eded art, and emotion work is the tool. ...

Almost everyone does the emotion work that produces what we might, broadly speaking, call deference. But women are expected to do more of it. A study by Wikler (1976) comparing male with female university professors found that stu­ dents expected women professors to be warmer and more supportive than male professors; given these expectations, proportionally more women professors were perceived as cold. In another study, Broverman, Broverman, and Clarkson (1970) asked clinically trained psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers to match vari­ ous characteristics with "normal adult men" and "normal adult women"; they more often associ­ ated "very tactful, very gentle, and very aware of feelings of others" with their ideas of the normal adult woman. In being adaptive, cooperative, and helpful, the woman is on a private stage behind the public stage, and as a consequence she is often seen as less good at arguing, telling

Symbolic Interactionism and Dramaturgy Ill 315

jokes, and teaching than she is at expressing appreciation of these activities. She is the con­ versational cheerleader. She actively enhances other people-usually men, but also other women to whom she plays woman. The more she seems .natural at it, the more her labor does not show as labor, the more successfully it is disguised as the absence of other, more prized qualities. As a woman she may be praised for out-enhancing the best enhancer, but as a person in comparison with comics, teachers, and argument-builders, she usually lives outside the climate of enhance­ ment that men tend to inhabit. Men, of course, pay court to certain other men and women and thus also do the emotion work that keeps defer­ ence sincere. The difference between men and women is a difference in the psychological effects of having or not having power.

Racism and sexism share this general pattern, but the two systems. differ in the avenues avail­ able for the translation of economic inequality into private terms. The white manager and the black factory worker l~ave work and go home, one to a generally white neighborhood and fam­ ily and the other to a generally black neighbor­ hood and family. But in the case of women and men, the larger economic inequality is filtered into the intimate daily exchanges between wife and husband. Unlike other subordinates, women seek primary ties . with a supplier. In marriage, the principle of reciprocity applies to wider are­ nas of each self: there is more to choose from in how we pay and are paid, and the paying between economically unequal parties goes on morning, noon, and night. The larger inequities find intimate expression.

Wherever it goes, the bargain of wages-for­ other-things travels in disguise. Marriage both bridges and obscures the gap between the resources available to men and those available to women.iv Because men and women do try to love one another-to cooperate in making love, mak­ ing babies, and making a life together-the very

iiiThe use offeminine wiles (including flattery) is felt to be a psychopolitical style of the subordinate; it is there­ fore disapproved ofby women who have gained a foothold in the man's world and can afford to disparage what they do not need to use.

i"Because women have less access to money and status than their male class peers do, they are more motivated than men to marry in order to win access to a much higher "male wage."

316 :: SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA

closeness of the bond they accept calls for some disguise of subordination. There will be talk in the "we" mode, joint bank accounts and joint deci­ sions, and the idea among women that they are equal in the ways that "really count." But underly­ ing this pattern will be different potential futures outside the marriage and the effect of that on the patterning of life.v The woman may thus become especially assertive about certain secondary deci­ sions, or especially active in certain limited domains, in order to experience a sense of equal­ ity that is missing from the overall relationship.

Women who understand their ultimate disad­ vantage and feel that their position cannot change may jealously guard the covertness of their tradi­ tional emotional resources, in the understandable fear that if the secret were told, their immediate situation would get worse. For to confess that their social charms are the product of secret work might make them less valuable, just as the sexual revolution has made sexual contact less "valu­ able" by lowering its bargaining power without promoting the advance of women into better­ paying jobs. In fact, of course, when we redefine "adaptability" and "cooperativeness" as a form of shadow labor, we are pointing to a hidden cost for which some recompense is due and suggest­ ing that a general reordering of female-male relationships is desirable.

There is one further reason why women may offer more emotion work of this sort than men: more women at all class levels do unpaid labor of a highly interpersonal sort. They nurture, manage, and befriend children. More "adaptive" and "cooperative," they address themselves bet­ ter to the needs of those who are not yet able to adapt and cooperate much themselves. Then, according to Jourard (1968), because they are seen as members of the category from which mothers come, women in general are asked to look out for psychological needs more than men are. The world turns to women for mothering, and this fact silently attaches itself to many a job description.

Women at Work

With the growth of large organizations calling for skills in personal relations, the womanly art of status enhancement and the emotion work that it requires has been made more public, more systematized, and more standardized. It is per­ formed by largely middle-class women in largely public-contact jobs.... Jobs involving emo­ tional labor comprise over a third of all jobs. But they form only a quarter of all jobs that men do, and over halfof all jobs that women do.

Many of the jobs that call for public contact also call for giving service to the public. Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, in The Hidden Inju­ ries of Class, comment on how people tend to rank service jobs in relation to other kinds of jobs: "At the bottom end of the scale are found not factory jobs but service jobs where the indi­ vidual has to perform personally for someone else. A bartender is listed below a coal miner, a taxi driver below a truck driver; we believe this occurs because their functions are felt to be more dependent on and more at the mercy of others" [my emphasis].vi Because there are more women than men in service jobs (21 percent compared with 9 percent), there are "hidden injuries" of gender attached to those of class.

Once women are at work in public-contact jobs, a new pattern unfolds: they receive less basic deference. That is, although some women are still elbow-guided through doors, chauf­ feured in cars, and protected from rain puddles, they are not shielded from one fundamental con­ sequence of their lower status: their feelings are accorded less weight than the feelings of men....

How, then, does a woman's lower status influ­ ence how she is treated by others? More basi­ cally, what is the prior link between status and the treatment of feeling? High-status people tend to enjoy the privilege of having their feelings noticed and considered important. The lower one's status, the more one's feelings are not noticed or treated as inconsequential. H. E. Dale,

vzick Rubin's study of young men and women in love relationships (generally middle-class persons of about the same age) found that the women tended to admire their male loved ones more than they were, in turn, admired by them. The women also felt "more like" their loved ones than the men did. (See Rubin 1970; Reiss 1960.)

visennett and Cobb (1973), p. 236.

ge organizations calling ttions, the womanly art d the emotion work that Lde more public, more standardized. It is pei:~ -class women in largely Jobs involving emo­

:r a third of all jobs. But of all jobs that men do, that women do. t call for public contact ~e to the public. Richan:l bb, in The Hidden on how people tend to ation to other kinds of i of the scale are found ice jobs where the indi, Jersonally for .,v,u,,_,.,_, dbelow a coal miner, ~ driver; we believe thi§ )tions are felt to be at the mercy e there are more s (21 percent tre "hidden injuries" of class. work in public-contact

folds: they receive , although some through doors,

ected from rain puddles, m one fundamental con: -'°"'"-- ,,,,,,__ _

status: their feelings ,.._._,_ -----,---,- n the feelings ofmen... · man's lower status i by others? More basi: link between status

1 High-status people of having their teelmJ;i;s l important. The

one's feelings are onsequential. H. E.

. e-class persons of about they were, in turn, ~ubin 1970; Reiss 1960.)

in The Higher Civil Service of Great Britain, reports the existence of a "doctrine of feelings":

The doctrine of feelings was expounded to me many years ago by a very eminent civil ser­ vant. ... He explained that the importance of feelings varies in close correspondence with the importance of the person who feels. If the pub­ lic interest requires that a junior clerk should be removed from his post, no regard need be paid to his feelings; if it is the case of an assistant secretary, they must be carefully considered, within reason; if it is a permanent secretary, feelings are a principal element in the situation, and only imperative public interest can override their requirements. vii

Working women are to working men as junior clerks are to permanent secretaries. Between executive and secretary, doctor and nurse, psy­ chiatrist and social worker, dentist and dental assistant, a power difference is reflected as a gender difference. The "doctrine of feelings" is another double standard between the two sexes.viii

The feelings of the lower-status party may be discounted in two ways: by considering them rational but unimportant or by considering them irrational and hence dismissable. An article enti­ tled "On Aggression in Politics: Are Women Judged by a Double Standard?" presented the results of a survey of female politicians. All those surveyed said they believed there was an affec­ tive double standard. As Frances Farenthold, the president of Wells College in Aurora, New York, put it: "You certainly see to it that you don't throw any tantrums. Henry Kissinger can have his scenes-remember the way he acted in Salz­ burg? But for women, we're still in the stage that if you don't hold in your emotions, you're pegged as emotional, unstable, and all those terms that

viiQuoted in Goffinan (1967), p. 10.

Symbolic Interactionism and Dramaturgy :i 317

have always been used to describe women."ix These women in public life were agreed on the following points. When a man expresses anger, it is deemed "rational" or understandable anger, anger that indicates not weakness of character but deeply held conviction. When women express an equivalent degree of anger, it is more likely to be interpreted as a sign of personal instability. It is believed that women are more emotional, and this very belief is used to invalidate their feelings. That is, the women's feelings are seen not as a response to real events but as reflections of them­ selves as "emotional" women.

Here we discover a corollary of the "doctrine of feelings": the lower our status, the more our manner of seeing and feeling is subject to being discredited, and the less believable it becomes. An "irrational" feeling is the twin of an invalidated perception. A person of lower status has a weaker claim to the right to define what is going on; less trust is placed in her judgments; and less respect is accorded to what she feels. Relatively speaking, it more often becomes the burden of women, as with other loweHtatus persons, to uphold a minority viewpoint, a discredited opinion.

Medical responses to male_ and female illness provide a case in point. One study of how doc­ tors respond to the physical complaints of back pain, headache, dizziness, chest pain, and fatigue-symptoms for which a doctor must take the patient's word-'-showed that among fifty­ two married couples, the complaints of the hus­ bands elicited more medical response than those of the wives. The authors conclude: "The data may bear out ... that the physicians ... tend to take illness more seriously in men than in women."x Another study of physician interac­ tions with 184 male and 130 female patients concluded that "doctors were more likely to

vmThe code of chivalry is said to require protection of the weaker by the stronger. Yet a boss may bring flowers to his secretary or open the door for her only to make up for the fact that he gets openly angry at her more often than he does at a male' equal or superior, and more often than she does at him. The flowers symbolize redress, even as they obscure the basic maldistribution of respect and its psychic cost.

iWew York Times, February 12, 1979 .

xMore women than men go to doctors, and this might seem to explain why doctors take them less seriously. But here it is hard to tell cause from effect, for if a woman's ~omplaints are not taken seriously, she may have to make several visits to doctors before a remedy is found (Armitage et al. 1979).

318 &1~ SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA

consider the psychological component of the patient's illness important when the patient was a woman.'"i The female's assertion that she was physically sick was more likely to be invalidated as something "she just imagined," something "subjective," not a response to anything real.

To make up for either way of weighing the feelings of the two sexes unequally, many women urge their feelings forward, trying to express them with more force, so as to get them treated with seriousness. But from there the spiral moves down. For the harder women try to oppose the "doctrine of feeling" by expressing their feelings more, the more they come to fit the image awaiting them as "emotional." Their efforts are discounted as one more example of emotionalism. The only way to counter the doc­ trine of feelings is to eliminate the more funda~ mental tie between gender and status.

The Status Shield at Work

Given this relation between status and the treatment of feeling, it follows that persons in low-status categories-women, people of color, children-lack a status shield against poorer treatment of their feelings. This simple fact has the power to utterly transform the content of a job. The job of flight attendant, for example, is not the same job for a woman as it is for a man. A day's accumulation of passenger abuse for a woman differs from a day's accumulation ofit for a man. Women tend to be more exposed than men to rude or surly speech, to tirades against the ser­ vice, the airline, and airplanes in general. As the company's main shock absorbers against "mis­ handled" passengers, their own feelings are more frequently subjected to rough treatment. In addi­ tion, a day's exposure to people who resist authority in women is a different experience for a woman than it is for a man. Because her gender is accorded lower status, a woman's shield against abuse is weaker, and the importance of what she herself might be feeling-when faced with blame for an airline delay, for example-is correspond­ ingly reduced. Thus the job for a man differs in essential ways from the same job for a woman.

xiWallens et al. (1979), p. 143.

In this respect, it is a disadvantage to be a woman-as 85 percent of all flight attendants are. And in this case, they are not simply women in the biological sense. They are also a highly visible distillation of middle-class American notions of femininity. They symbolize Woman. Insofar as the category "female" is mentally associated with having less status and authority, female flight attendants are more readily classi­ fied as "really" female than other females are. And as a result their emotional lives are even less protected by the status shield.

More than female accountants, bus drivers, or gardeners, female flight attendants mingle with people who expect them to enact two leading roles of Womanhood: the loving wife and mother (serving food, tending the needs of others) and the glamorous "career woman" ( dressed to be seen, in contact with strange men, professional and controlled in manner, and literally very far from home). They do the job of symbolizing the transfer of homespun femininity into the imper­ sonal marketplace, announcing, in effect, "I work in the public eye, but I'~ still a woman at heart.''

Passengers borrow their expectations about gender biographies from home and from the wider culture and then base their demands on this borrowing. The different fictive biographies they attribute to male and female workers make sense out of what they expect to receive in the currency of caretaking and authority. One male flight attendant noted:

They always ask about my work plans. "Why are you doing this?" That's one question we get all the time from passengers. "Are you planning to go into management?" Most guys come in expecting to do it for a year or so and see how they like it, but we keep getting asked about the management training program. I don't know any guy that's gone into management from here.

In contrast, a female flight attendant said:

Men ask me why I'm not married. They don't ask the guys that. Or else passengers will say, "Oh, when you have kids, you '11 quit this job. I know you will." And I say, "Well, no, I'm not

1 disadvantage to be a of all flight attendants , , are not simply women /i fhey are also a highly/' niddle-class American < 1ey symbolize Woman. · ·

"female" is mentally '. :ss status and authority, : ire more readily classi- / :han other females are. · ional lives are even less ield. mntants, bus drivers, or attendants mingle with 1 to enact two leading : loving wife and mother··•·•. 1e needs of others) and / ,~man" ( dressed to be ·· ; mge men, professional / r, and literally very fat job of symbolizing the aininity into the ncing, in effect, "I work still a woman at heart." 1eir expectations about 1 home and from the base their demands on rent fictive biographies :i female workers make. :xpect to receive in the rrd authority. One male

my work plans. "Why t's one question we get ;ers. "Are you planning '" Most guys come in ,ear or so and see how getting asked about the :ogram. I don't know nanagement from here.

1t attendant said:

)t married. They don't ;e passengers will say, s, you'll quit this job. I :ay, "Well, no, I'm not

going to have kids." "Oh yes you will," they say. ''No I'm not," I say, and I don't want to get more personal than that. They may expect me to have kids because of my gender, but I'm not, no matter what they say.

If a female flight attendant is seen as a proto­ mother, then it is natural that the work of nurtur­ ing should fall to her. As one female attend~nt said: "The guys bow out of it more and we pick up the slack. I mean the handling of babies, the handling of children, the coddling of the old folks. The guys don't 'get involved in that quite as much." Confirming this, one male flight atten­ dant noted casually, "Nine times out often, when I go out of my way to talk, it will be to attractive gal passengers." In this regard, females generally appreciated gay male flight attendants who, while trying deftly to sidestep the biography test, still gravitate more toward nurturing work than straight males are reputed to do. .

Gender makes two jobs out of one m yet another sense. Females are asked more often than males to appreciate jokes, listen to stories, and give psychological advice. Fema~e specia~iza~ion in these offerings takes on meamng only m hght of the fact that flight attendants of both sexes are required to be both deferential and a~thorit~tive; they have to be able to appreciate a Joke mcely, but they must also be firm in enforcing the rules about oversized luggage. But because more def­ erence is generally expected from a woman, she has a weaker grasp on passenger respect for her authority and a harder time enforcing rules.

In fact, passengers generally assume that men have more authority than women and that men exercise authority over women. For males in the corporate world to whom air travel is a way of life this assumption has more than a distant rela­ tio~ to fact. As one flight attendant put it: "Say you've got a businessman sitting o':'er t?ere in aisle five. He's got a wife who takes his smt to the cleaners and makes the hors d'oeuvres for his business ·guests. He's got an executive secretary with horn-rimmed glasses who types 140 million words a minute and knows more about his airline ticket than he does. There's no woman in his life over him." This assumption of male authority allows ordinary twenty-year-old male flight attendants to be mistaken for the "managers" or

Symbolic Jnteractionism and Dramaturgy == 319

"superintendents" of older female flight atten­ dants. A uniformed male among women, passen­ gers assume, must have authority over women. In fact because males were excluded from this job untii after a long "discrimination" suit in the mid- 1960s and few were hired until the early 1970s, most male flight attendants are younger and have less seniority than most female attendants.

The assumption of male authority has two results. First, authority, like status, acts as a shield against scapegoating. Since the women work~rs on the plane were thought to have less authonty and therefore less status, they were more suscep­ tible to scapegoating. When the plane was late, the steaks gone, or the ice out, frustrations were vented more openly toward female workers. Females were expected to "takeit" better, it being more their role to absorb an expression of dis­ pleasure and less their role to put a stop to it.

In addition, both male and female workers adapted to this fictional redistribution of authority. Both, in different ways, made it more real. Male flight attendants tended to react to passeng~rs as !f they had more authority than they really did. This made them less tolerant of abuse and firmer in handling it. They conveyed the message that as authorities they expected compliance without loud complaint. Passengers sensing this message were discouraged from pursuing complaints and stopped sooner. Fymale flight attendants, on the other hand, assuming that passengers would honor their authority less, used more tactful and defer­ ential means of handling abuse. They were more deferential toward male passengers (from whom they expected less respect) than toward female passengers (whose own fund of respect was expected to be lower). And they were less suc­ cessful in preventing the escalation of abuse. As one male flight attendant observed: "I think the gals tend to get more intimidated if a man is crabby at them than if a woman is." .

Some workers understood this as merely a difference of style. As one woman reflected:

The guys have a low level of tolerance an~ their own male way of asserting themselves with the passenger that I'm not able to use. I told a guy who had a piece ofluggage in front of him that wouldn't fit under the seat, I told him, "It won't fit we'll have to do something with it." He

'

320 :: SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA

came back with, "Oh, but it's been here the whole trip, I've had it with me all the time, blah, blah, blah." He gave me some guff. I thought to myself, I'll finish this later, I'll walk away right now. I intended to come back to him. A flying partner of mine, a young man, came by this pas­ senger, without knowing about our conversa­ tion, and said to him, "Sir, that bag is too big for your seat. We're going to have to take it away." "Oh, here you are," the guy says, and he hands it over to him.... You don't see the male flight attendants being physically abused or verbally abused nearly as much as we are.

The females' supposed "higher tolerance for abuse" amounted to a combination of higher exposure to it and less ammunition-in the cur­ rency of respect-to use against it.

This pattern set in motion another one: female workers often went to their male co-workers to get them to "cast a heavier glance." As one woman who had resigned herself to this explained wearily: "I used to fight it and assert myself. Now I'qi just too overworked. It's simpler to just go get the male purser. One look at him and the troublemaker shuts up. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that I don't have time for a big con­ frontation. The job is so stressful these days, you don't go out of your way to make it more stress­ ful. A look from a male carries more weight." Thus the greater the respect males could com­ mand, the more they were called on to claim it.

This only increased the amount of deference that male workers felt their female co-workers owed them, and women found it harder to super­ vise junior males than females. One young male attendant said that certain conditions had to be met-and deference offered-before he would obey a woman's orders: "If it's an order without a human element to it, then I'll balk. I think sometimes it's a little easier for a man to be an authority figure and command respect and coop­ eration. I think it depends on how the gal handles herself. If she doesn't have much confidence or if she goes the other way and gets puffed out of shape, then in that case I think she could have more trouble with the stewards than with the gals" [my emphasis]. Workers tended to agree that females took orders better than males, no matter how "puffed out of shape" the attendant in charge might be, and that women in charge

had to be nicer in exercising their authority than men did.

This attitude toward status and authority inspired compensatory reactions among some female workers. One response was to adopt the crisply cheerful but no-nonsense style of a Cub Scout den mother-a model of female authority borrowed from domestic life and used here to make it acceptable for women to tell adult men what to do. In this way a woman might avoid being criticized as "bossy" or "puffed out of shape" by placing her behavior within the boundaries of the gender expectations of passengers and co-workers.

Another response to displaced anger and chal­ lenged authority was to make small tokens of respect a matter of great concern. Terms of address, for example, were seen as an indicator of status, a promise of the right to politeness which those deprived of status unfortunately lack. The term "girl," for example, was recognized by female workers as the moral equivalent of calling black men "boys." Although in private and among themselves, the women flight attendants I knew usually called themselves "girls," many were opposed to the use of the term in principle. They saw it not only as a question of social or moral importance but as a practical matter. To be addressed as a "girl" was to be subjected to more on-the-job stress. The order, "Girl, get me some cream" has a different effect than the request "Oh miss, could I please have some cream?" And if the cream has run out because the commissary didn't provide enough, it will be the "girls" who get the direct expressions of disappointment, exasperation, and blame. Tokens of respect can be exchanged to make a bargain: "I'll manage my unpleasant feelings for you if you'll manage yours for me." When outrageously rude people occasionally enter a plane, it reminds all con­ cerned why the flimsy status shield against abuse is worth struggling over.

Schooled in emotion management at home, women have entered in disproportionate num­ bers those jobs that call for emotional labor out­ side the home. Once they enter the marketplace, a certain social logic unfolds. Because of the division of labor in the society at large, women in any particular job are assigned lower status and less authority than men. As a result, they lack a shield against the "doctrine of feelings."

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nanagement at home, iisproportionate num­ r emotional labor out~ enter the marketplace, folds. Because of the ciety at large, women assigned lower status 1en. As a result, they 'doctrine of feelings."

Jyfuch more often than men, they become the . complaint department, the ones to whom dissat­

isfaction is fearlessly expressed. Their own feel­ ings tend to be treated as less important. In ways that the advertising smiles obscure, the job has different contents for women and men.

Estrangement From Sexual Identity

Regardless of gender, the job poses problems of identity. What is my work role and what is "me"? How can I do deep acting without "feel­ ing phony" and losing self-esteem? How can I redefine the job as "illusion making" without becoming cynical?

But there are other psychological issues a flight attendant faces if she is a woman. In response to her relative lack of power and her exposure to the "doctrine of feelings," she may seek to improve her position by making use of two traditionally "feminine" qualities-those of the supportive mother and those of the sexually desir~ble mate, Thus, .some women are moth­ erly; they support and enhance the well-being and status of others. But in being motherly, they may also act motherly and may sometimes expe­ rience themselves using the motherly act to win regard from others. In the same way, some women are sexually attractive and may act in ways that are sexually alluring. For example, one flight att~ndant V{ho played the sexual queen­ swaying slowly down the aisle with exquisitely understated suggestiveness-described herself as using her sexual attractiveness to secure inter­ est and favors from male passengers. In each case, the woman is using a feminine quality for private purposes. But it is also true, for the flight attendant, that both "motherly" behavior and a "sexy" look and manner are partly an achieve­ ment of corporate engineering-a result of the company's emphasis on the weight and (former) age requirements, grooming classes, and letters from passengers regarding the looks and demeanor of flight attendants. In its training and supervisory roles, the company may play the part of the protective duenna. But in its commer­ cial role as an advertiser of sexy and glamorous service, it acts more like a backstage match­ maker. Some early United Airlines ads said, "And she might even make a good wife." The

Symbolic Interactionism and Dramaturgy Ill 321

company, of course, has always maintained that it does not meddle in personal affairs .

Thus the two ways in which women tradition­ ally try to improve their lot-by using their motherly capacity to enhance the status and well­ being of others, and by using their sexual attrac­ tiveness-have come under company manage­ ment. Most flight attendants I spoke with agreed that companies used and attached profit to these qualities....

Estrangement from aspects of oneself are, in one light, a means of defense. On the job, the acceptance of a division between the "real" self and the self in a company up_iform is often a way to avoid stress, a wise realization, a saving grace. But this solution also poses serious problems. For in dividing up our sense of self, in order to save the "real" self from unwelcome intrusions, we necessarily relinquish a healthy sense of whole­ ness. We come to accept as normal the tension we feel between our "real" and our "on-stage" selves.

More women than men go into public-contact work and especially into work in which status enhancement is the essential social-psychologi­ cal task. In some jobs, such as that of the flight attendant, women may perform this task by play­ ing the Woman. Such women are more vulnera­ ble, on this account, to feeling estranged from their capacity to perform and enjoy two tradi­ tional feminine roles-offering status enhance­ ment and sexual attractiveness to others. These capacities are now under corporate as well as personal management.

Perhaps this realization accounts for the laughter at a joke I heard surreptitiously passed around the Delta Training Office, as if for an audience of insiders. It went like this: A male passenger came across a woman flight attendant seated in the galley, legs apart, elbows on knees, her chin resting in one hand and a lighted ciga­ rette in the other-held between thumb and forefinger. "Why are you holding your cigarette like that?" the man asked. Without looking up or smiling, the woman took another puff and said, "If I had balls, I'd be driving this plane." Inside the feminine uniform and feminine "act" was a would-be man. It was an estrangement joke, a poignant behind-the-scenes protest at a commer­ cial logic that standardizes and trivializes the dignity of women.