The Managed Heart

This chapter further examines the airline industry’s commodification of emotional labor, particularly focusing on flight attendants, to explore how corporate demands and competitive market pressures transform private emotional systems into public commodities. Management expects flight attendants to display constant friendliness and warmth while masking their true feelings, which creates a strain known as emotive dissonance. This separation between genuine feelings and feigned emotions leads to psychological stress and, over time, forces workers to align their real emotions with their job requirements.

The author traces this transformation back to the airline industry’s evolution from the 1950s to the 1970s. During this period, companies like Delta Airlines began incorporating emotional labor into their service offerings. Competitive dynamics, influenced by the Civil Aeronautics Board’s regulation and subsequent deregulation in 1978, shifted the focus from price competition to service competition, emphasizing the need for emotional labor. Delta encouraged all employees, particularly flight attendants, to promote the company, making them the most direct representatives of the airline’s service quality.

Moreover, the text highlights how advertisements played a crucial role in shaping expectations. Airlines like Continental and National used sexualized imagery and innuendos to appeal to male passengers, creating fantasies of “easily available and guiltless sex” (94).