A black-and-white photo showing three women around a poster that describes the "average United stewardess" as 23 years old, weighing 117 pounds and measuring 5'5" is circulating on social media platforms like Pinterest, Reddit, Imgur and X.
One November 2024 post on Facebook, for example, has received more than 7,400 likes as of this writing.
The photograph is authentic; it is not the result of digital editing or artificial intelligence (AI) technology. T
Cathy Henderson, a rights coordinator of the Harry Ransom Center, confirmed the photo's authenticity.
According to the center, the photo was originally published on Aug. 28, 1948, by the New York Journal-American, a daily newspaper that stopped publishing in 1966. The photo included the following
Three United Airlines stewardesses -- Barbara Marion, Patricia Howard and Marie Zralek -- check out the specifications for their job.
The photo is part of what the Harry Ransom Center calls a "photographic morgue," a gallery of 2 million prints and images from the newspaper's archives. According to the center, The New York Journal-American was the "leading New York City broadsheet for decades," serving as "one of the early cornerstones of American journalism" with microfilm from the
Snopes has looked into other supposedly vintage images depicting airline workers, including one that purportedly showed the first female flight attendant on a commercial flight in 1914. That photo was a sepia-toned shot from Britney Spears' video for her 2003 song "Toxic." We've also debunked an AI-generated image that was said to show a flight attendant handing out cigarettes to airplane passengers.