Posted on 11/27/2007 7:27:19 PM PST by JACKRUSSELL
(BEIJING) -- Fly on a Chinese airline and you will be pampered by flight attendants who look eerily alike. They are young, beautiful and practically the same height.
This is not a coffee-tea-or-me stereotype, but the result of a rigorous selection process that is more beauty pageant than equal-opportunity job interview.
If you're older than 24, don't bother applying.
If you aren't taller than the average Chinese woman, go home.
And if your legs are similar to tree trunks, don't call.
Sound like a throwback to the dark ages of workplace discrimination?
Here, in the world's fastest-growing aviation market, entry barriers for flight attendants are not only tolerated -- they're flaunted as symbols of excellence.
"A lot of Chinese passengers judge the quality of airlines based on the quality of their flight attendants, meaning, 'Are they pretty or not pretty?'" said Luo Man, a media director at China Southern, the country's largest carrier.
Good looks are such a commodity these days that China Southern has put its annual recruitment drive on reality TV. While men are not excluded from the jobs, only women are featured in the on-television selection process. The show, funded in part by the airline, follows a six-month audition -- complete with swimsuit competition and a race involving luggage, makeup brushes and drink trays -- through several major Chinese cities. Thousands of young women line up for the chance to compete for 180 openings.
China Southern's Web site for the show, which provides news on the auditions, has had more than 1 million hits.
"This is every little girl's dream," said Lu Ju, 20, who has flown three times in her life. "I want to be beautiful like the flight attendants. They can see the world and go places most people can't."......
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
I haven’t forgotten the brutality of the Japs from now that long ago. They were quite rude in their behavior.
Nothing to sit on, and not much in the Scarlett Johanssen department either. Real women have curves, and don’t speak GD awful Mandarin.
Independent consultant, acoustical engineering. Predominantly consumer electronics loudspeaker design, so I work with a lot of the factories from Suzhou to Ningbo.
I like the cleaner air of Seattle, but given that a lot of the bigger cities in East China are about as clean as LA, it’s not as bad as so many make it out to be.
China’s working hard to jump from a predominantly agricultural society to a modern, 21st century manufacturing/information society, and do it in 2 generations (we took 7 to do it). That leads to a lot of disruption, but they’re managing it...
I’ve lived in Europe, South America (Chile), the US (multiple places), and overall China’s no Seattle or Munich, but it’s better than Brussels, Santiago, or LA.
I’m sincerely happy to hear that they are doing well. I hope their politics catch up.
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