Assignment 1-3-2

          I picked this article because of its title, Like Sportive Birds: The Girl Aviators

Series and the Culture of Flight in America.  I love to travel and airplanes and flight.  Always have.  I make travel arrangements for the company that I work for.  I even had a fascination about getting to go up in the space shuttle at one point.  (I would still love to be able to do that).

          My article starts by talking about the first woman to take flight across the English Channel on April 16, 1912.  She was 36 years old, named Harriet Quimby and was the first licensed American female pilot from the United States.  Not many people remember her because her flight was over shadowed by the Titanic tragedy the day before.  The article goes on to talk about a four volume Girl Aviator series of books that was produced during this same time period.  The titles “The Girl Aviators and the Phantom Airship, The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings, The Girl Aviators’ Sky Cruise, and The Girl Aviators’ Motor Butterfly”.  The books were aimed at young teen readers and were about siblings named Peggy and Roy who were teenagers and built an airplane in their backyard.  With that plane, they solved mysteries both aeronautical and criminal. 

          The books gave a glimpse in US popular culture when human –powered flight went from fantasy to real life.  The Girl Aviator series gave young girls in the early 1900’s, young female heroes.  The books helped give way for true female aviators such as Amelia Earhart and Anne Morrow Lindbergh and helped start new roles for women.

          The American public was fascinated with the skies.  Aviators became symbols of American ingenuity as well as drama, romance and fearlessness.  They because headlines and fed into many imaginations.  People looked forward to seeing the beautiful aircraft in the skies.  The planes of the past were made so different than those of today.  The article states that people watched for the flights and wanted to see what they looked like.  It would be the closest equivalent to what happened after 9/11 with the absence of planes from the US skies when it was unsettling and seemingly unnatural.

          There was also negativity that no one could fly without wings.  The books opened up the imaginations and changed those perceptions of flying and also allowed the acceptance of female pilots.  Flight also gave the new sense of freedom not only for females but for males as well.

          While the Girl Aviator series was being written, real female pilots where raising concerns over dangerous behavior as to being in experimental machines made from ordinary household items as in cloth, glue and wood.  But the titles show that the girls contributed to the aviation, not a male.

          This article was informative, but confusing at the same time.  The author skipped around from the book to real pilots, back to the book to women in the 1900’s.  I found it hard to follow at times, but it was interesting as to how much history was actually packed into these few pages.  The first U.S. female pilot, Harriet Quimby, I had never even heard of until I started reading this.  I also never really gave it much thought as to women becoming pilots even before airplanes existed.

          I believe that this article is important for as much history that it told.  In a few short pages, I learned a few things that I had not known before.  I always thought that Amelia Earhart was the first female pilot.  I guess the books were a very important part of airplane history for starting the want for little girls to do more than what females were supposed to do at that time in our history.

Reference

Like Sportive Birds: The Girl Aviators Series and the Culture of Flight in America, 1911–12, The Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 45, issue 4 (August 2012), p. 769-788