For The Love of John Wayne’s Ghost

Movies have been a staple of American life for well over 100 years. We started with the silent era. Cameras were stationary. Settings were basic. Subtitles were inserted to keep the audience up to speed. Today we have computer-generated graphics that create entire scenes out of nothing but imagination and digital fairy dust.

Throughout all that time the movies have focused their lens on adventure and drama — exciting scenarios the audience could experience through dancing lights on a screen. They take in all the excitement of the moment with none of the actual danger or personal risk.

Aviation has been the playground of many a Hollywood hit. For good reason: Aviation is exciting. It has historically been the realm of a special breed of men. Confident, capable, and fearless.

American icon John Wayne appeared in several roles as a brave, daring, occasionally headstrong pilot. The kind of man who could win a war with a stern look and a clenched fist. In real life Wayne sat in the back, leaving the controls to the professionals.

Jimmy Stewart was a more modest character. Although he did play Charles Lindbergh on film, a role made somewhat more believable due to the fact that Jimmy was an accomplished pilot in his own right.

The one unassailable link in this chain is that historically these audacious adventurers of aerial accomplishment were all men. Virtually every one of them carried a Y chromosome. The rare exception being Kathryn Boyd who played a pilot in The Flying Ace in 1926. We’ve all seen that one, right?

Then came Monica Barbaro. She played the role of “Phoenix” in Top Gun: Maverick. Barbaro brought a little femininity to the military pilot stereotype, which is a good.

Female pilots exist. They commit to the same training as their male counterparts. They pass the same tests and ultimately dispatch to fill the same seats flying the same missions.

Yet, female pilots tend not to become rough and tumble imitations of men. For the most part they fly and do their best, just like the boys. But they often make an attempt at preserving some sense of femininity even while in the cockpit.

This should not be a problem. Yet it can be. There is a small minority of pilots and passengers who are less than excited to see a woman in the pilot’s seat. They see it as an unacceptable situation not unlike the girls invading the boy’s locker room.

As you gaze upon the movie screen at John Wayne and Andy Devine in Island in the Sky, you can almost smell the cow manure on their boots. There’s no doubt that airplane was rife with the distinct aroma of human sweat, bologna sandwiches, and tobacco smoke. It looks good on screen, but few of us would want to spend much time in that environment without the offer of hazard pay.

Women tend to tidy things up a bit, just by their presence. That’s a truism we can all count on whether we like it or not.

In an attempt to seek real insight into this recent shift in the aeronautical paradigm, I undertook a completely unscientific study to discover some pertinent information. My one question survey was this, “what’s your position on makeup and perfume in the cockpit?”

I did not pose this question to any male pilots principally because I’ve never met a male pilot who wore makeup or perfume on a regular basis. Women became the exclusive target of my research group.

These women fly Part 91 and Part 121. They’re professionals, which is to say they are paid to fly. They’re good at it. They’ve been empowered with the same privileges and are restrained by the same limitations as their male counterparts.

But empirical evidence suggests they tend to look and smell significantly better.

First things first, a pilot or a flight student should never make any attempt to hit on their female counterpart. Both parties are there to do a job. Whether you refer to it as the cockpit or the flight deck, it is no place to get flirty. Aviate, navigate, communicate. Romantic aspirations are best left to the hotel bar, not the aircraft.

“When I was going through flight training I always tried to diminish my femininity to fit in more,” said one respondent. Over time and with experience her efforts to be less feminine fell by the wayside. “My stance is, I am who I am. I am a woman. I like to look nice.”

Interestingly enough, male pilots can completely identify with that concept, minus two letters. “I am who I am. I am a man. I like to look nice.”

When is the last time you saw a CFI or an airline pilot show up in dirty overalls, unkempt hair, unshaven and unshowered spouting the line, “I don’t care how I look.” Yeah, me neither.

Another female pilot shared a perspective that never occurred to me. She alters her makeup based on the season. She goes light on the makeup all year and avoids perfumes which could irritate the eyes or nasal passages of her counterpart in flight. Her summer makeup is lighter than her winter palate for the very logical reason that a sweaty cockpit tends to make some products run. Nobody of either sex wants to present a less than kempt visage on landing.

One young woman shared a line that really caught my attention, proving that the old days really are behind us. “I recently flew with a captain who was wearing a maternity uniform,” she said.

Personally, I do not have it in me to suggest to an individual wearing four bars, flying a widebody over an ocean, that women can’t fly. They obviously can. And they can look good doing it without any degradation to their piloting skills.

In the modern era, I think even the late, great John Wayne would agree. Jimmy Stewart definitely would.