Coffee, Tea or Me?

"The changing image of New Zealand's air hostesses over the years provides wry commentary on substantial social change. Seven women talk candidly to filmmaker Brita McVeigh about their lives as hostesses, regaling us with anecdotes that are borne out by generous dollops of hilarious archival footage: a change in uniform always made the newsreels. They reveal the looney specifics of exacting beauty regimes and an institutional obsession with correctness that never admitted that so much of the image was about insinuating sexual availability. But these women were living the high life, earning well - for "girls" - and enjoying long layovers in Los Angeles, Honolulu, Tahiti... What did they have to complain about? The saga of their struggle for equal rights, pay and superannuation provides painful evidence of how unshakeable and restrictive the manufactured image of them remained well into the 1980s. Clearly inspired by the grit beneath the welcoming smiles, Brita McVeigh, who was being born when most of them were handing out the cheese and crackers, does them proud." - The NZ International Film Festival.