Sexism | Strict dress code relaxed at Virgin Atlanic - should other companies follow suit?

Female flight attendants under the employment of Virgin Atlantic will no longer be required to wear makeup whilst working and will be given the choice of wearing trousers or a skirt, the airline announced today.

As an industry well known for its traditionally sexist rhetoric, the decision to relax the female-only dress code has been widely praised by the company’s vocal critics. Under the new employee guidelines, historic cases of employees being reprimanded for wearing the wrong shade of ‘Virgin-red’ lipstick or being daring enough to wear no lipstick at all may be a thing of the past.

Virgin Atlantic’s iconic, yet sexist, image of its flight attendants in tight red uniforms, quaffed hair and red lipstick was the product of the process that its candidates must go through before taking on the role.

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Female Virgin Atlantic employees have historically been required to attend what it calls a ‘groom school’ before they’re deemed worthy to serve customers on one of the 20,000 flights that take to the skies each year.