The Girlfriends S6/E2: Losing It

0:02Speaker 1:Novel.

0:06Speaker 2:Hey you, it's now here. Before we get started, I just want to give you a quick heads up about what's in this episode. You'll hear about the extreme pressures Stewardess's face to stay thin and the consequences of that, including disordered eating. But it's not all bleak. You'll also hear how the women found solidarity, humor, and the first sparks of rebellion against those impossible standards. If these themes feel difficult, you'll find links to support organizations in the episode description, including eating disorder and mental health helplines.

0:44Speaker 1:I would basically have a checklist in my head when I got up in the morning.

0:50Speaker 2:It's early on a typical Monday morning for newly qualified Stewardess Pat Gibbs.

1:00Speaker 1:Would be eat breakfast, Get my uniform, make sure it's clean, put it on. Do I need a coat? No, it's summer. Do I have a girdle? Lot? Have your hat on two fingers above your eyebrow, have your white gloves on, uniform straight, no wrinkles. Everything looks great. When you go to the airport, you want to make sure you're there early, so you would go over and sign your name. That's called a sign in an hour before your flight, and then you would be given an assignment. Ladies and gentlemen, we have just been advised that we'll be departing.

1:44Speaker 2:In about five minutes.

1:45Speaker 1:Once you got on the plane, good to check all the emergency equipment. We're about ready for take off.

1:52Speaker 3:Would you fasten your seatbelt please?

1:55Speaker 1:You would take off. You didn't have jump seats back then. You had to sit next to the passengers so you can visit with them and make them feel comfortable.

2:07Speaker 3:You may unfasten your seatbelts now and you may smoke if you care to.

2:12Speaker 1:Then you go back and you go through again and say what would you like to drink? Would you like some coffee? Would you like some tea?

2:20Speaker 2:I just checked the weather with the captain, mister Smith, should be very nice when we land. As a steward is in the sixties, Pat's routine was routine. But within this repetitive schedule, there's one thing Pat really doesn't want to do.

2:39Speaker 1:When I went to work, I would go into the operations area and do the best job I can to avoid going around the scales.

2:51Speaker 2:We all know the dread of seeing scales in the airport. Your mind races, wondering if that wheel of parmesan stuffed into your carry on, we'll tip you over the limit and into paying a fee that's practically a mortgage deposit. But for Pat, it's a whole other level of dread because they're not weighing her bag. They're weighing her. At American Airlines in the nineteen sixties, if you were Pat's height and age, you could not weigh more than one hundred and twenty seven pounds, basically fifty seven kilograms.

3:29Speaker 1:I constantly fought my weight during my entire career with the airlines. I just tried everything to lose weight because I knew the supervisors could come out put me on the scale, which I'm there one day and they did. They said, okay, Pat, get on the scale.

3:52Speaker 2:Pat steps up, a bead of sweat crawling down her brow. The supervisor taps the sliding till it levels out. It reads one hundred and thirty one pounds four pounds, two kilos over Pat's limit.

4:13Speaker 1:I started, Oh, I think I have my period or I'm getting my period, and that's why I'm over my maximum. Give me another two weeks when my period's gone. Well, they didn't know how long you had a period, but I never had a two week period ever that I would make up stuff like that.

4:38Speaker 2:According to Pat's memory, the supervisor says, okay, I'll give you some time to fix this. Oh and by the way, you're on mandatory leave suspended.

4:50Speaker 1:I'm going to take you off payroll. It was just okay, we'll give you two weeks. You come the way in and you'll be back on your flight schedule.

5:02Speaker 2:Two weeks to lose two kilos.

5:05Speaker 1:I was thinking, oh my god, just four.

5:09Speaker 2:Pounds and a fortnight standing between Pat Gibbs and her career, her dreams, and her paycheck. From the teams at Novel and iHeart podcasts, This is the Girlfriends season six, Flight or Fight. This is your host speaking new McShane Wolfheart, episode two, Losing It. Pat is on a mission to lose four pounds pronto. To help, she has a secret weapon, the American Airlines Company doctor.

6:36Speaker 1:So you go in and the doctor was sitting on one side of his desk and you're on the other, and he'd say, well, what's your problem, Pat? Are you eating too much? Maybe I should give you something to help you lose some weight. And I would always say yes.

6:55Speaker 2:The doctor hands over a prescription. Back at home, Pat tips a pill from the bottle into her hand. The tablets are black, gleaming like onyx, and in this matrix meets ozembic scenario. Pat has a choice of staying in her unmedicated one hundred and thirty one pound reality or taking the pill and entering a new, slimmer utopia.

7:26Speaker 1:I would take any drug that medical would give me to keep the weight off.

7:34Speaker 2:Almost immediately, Pat sees the difference. These pills put her metabolism on double speed and completely annihilate her appetite.

7:43Speaker 1:I would be smoking cigarettes, drinking black coffee, and not eating, and you can keep your weight down that way. I was quite happy when I was on this medication, and it really helped me lose white.

8:02Speaker 2:Those four pounds Pat needs to lose to get her job back. They just evaporate on this wonder drug. Before she knows it, Pat is back working on the plane. As they say in the biz, She's back on the line. What did it feel like to take the pills? Like, what was the effect that it had on you? Besides being able to keep weight off?

8:21Speaker 1:Well, you feel wonderful. She feel great, it changes something I guess in your head, and you feel like you can do anything. You talk a lot. I was talking to all the passengers very friendly, and I was happy to see all of them and to have them on board and to hear their tales of woe.

8:48Speaker 2:What Pat didn't know at the time was if those miracle pills were in fact a potent cocktail of amphetamine, salts, street name speed, and those drugs do what they say on the tin. All of a sudden, Pat feels like someone hit the fast forward button on her life to the frenetic amphetamine montage.

9:12Speaker 1:I could just take the pills. I could stay up all night on the all nighters. We will be serving dinner as soon as we take off, thank you. I was able to keep my weight down.

9:24Speaker 4:If they enroll with a few extra pounds, they graduate light enough to fly.

9:29Speaker 1:I was much better on the flights by talking my head off to the passengers.

9:36Speaker 2:And delais really all irritating, So is there something I can do to help you.

9:41Speaker 1:I wasn't too happy if they were starting to wear off, but I could tell when they were, and I would just take another kill, and once it ran out, I'd be back over asking for another prescription.

10:00Speaker 2:I wanted to be a hostess since I was eighteen. I'm five feet four at weigh one hundred and fifteen pounds.

10:06Speaker 1:I always talked a lot, but I talked a lot more for you. Would you like some coffee? Would you like some tea? Would you like a martini or Manhattan? I need to lose weight. Just give me diet bills. Is this a business trip? I was happy talking to people.

10:26Speaker 5:We taught her to make.

10:27Speaker 2:Your flight comfortable, but we didn't have to teach her to be nice.

10:36Speaker 1:The only way I was able to keep my weight down was by taking this pill. I never asked what it was.

10:47Speaker 2:If you're thinking this bizarre airline weight Watchers Club is restricted to American airlines, you can think again. A two and a half hour flight away from where Pattes stationed, Casey Grant flies for Delta out of Chicago.

11:01Speaker 3:Being a stewardess was the best experience of living. You're meeting interesting people every day because you were steward as. You were invited into movie stars homes because as the movie stars flew in first class.

11:17Speaker 1:I had Smokey Robinson, I had Gladys Knight. I've had Jimmy Carter.

11:23Speaker 3:I've had Magic Johnson and had personal conversations with him. Was invited to a party that night by Magic Johnson. It was a fairy tale life. My sister used to tell me all the time. She said, you don't live in the real world. What was the only world I knew.

11:38Speaker 2:Casey loves her job, but heavy is the head that wears the pillbox hat to be in this exclusive group, to be a stewardess, she knows she has to maintain her appearance to Delta's standards.

11:52Speaker 3:I am five four and I had to be one hundred and twenty and no more.

11:56Speaker 2:That's fifty five kilograms. I've heard all kinds of techniques stewardesses would use to pass weight checks. Don't eat before duh. Make sure you have no jewelry on, not even a bra that could add extra weight. But Casey had the most incredible approach to outsmart her supervisor.

12:17Speaker 3:You sneak into the room ahead of time. I put a piece of gum on the scale. Well that was I got on there. It would not be a rite reading, but it would be the correct one for me to be able to keep my job. So they would come in and so you go okay, case you take your shoes off everything. I jumped on the scale, held my breath.

12:38Speaker 2:And the dial of the scale went all the way up until it hit the piece of gum that would keep it in place.

12:44Speaker 3:At one twenty, it was perfect. I was one hundred and twenty, and so she goes okay. So then when she turns to write your weight down, that's when you reach behind there, take the gum off the scale, take the evidence with you, and you leave it. Then you're good for another three months until you have to do the gum trick again. You had to make weight tech or you were going to be suspended and possibly lose your job. So of course your day starts with you jumping on your scale to see am I going to make it. In one particular time, I think it might have been a pound overweight. It wasn't much, but I had starved myself. If it meant drinking a glass of water would add some more weight, I didn't drink any water, and I was trying to get dressed to go out to the airport, and I remember sitting down on the toilet and when I woke up, my head was in the sink. So yes, I had passed out from being so dehydrated. You looked at food in a different way.

13:47Speaker 3:You look at a piece of cake, and you realize that could be your job or satisfaction.

13:52Speaker 1:For five minutes.

13:55Speaker 3:I took laxatives, I took water pills. I sat in sna It was not healthy. But all I knew is I wanted to be a stewardis.

14:08Speaker 2:But why do these strict weight limits even exist? Well? One reason customer service. That was according to management people like Robert Crandall, who took over as senior vice president of marketing at American Airlines in nineteen seventy four. Until the late seventies, he was working in Manhattan. Americans headquarters in New York City were in a gargantuan building on Third Avenue. The office tower is dark, cubic and seems to point up at one side like a man puffing out his chest. American occupies more than a quarter of the forty one story edifice. Robert works on the inside, coming up with marketing strategies to distinguish American Airlines from its competitors. This is because back then ticket prices were regulated by the government. Say you flew United Braniff or American going New York to LA It wouldn't matter. They all had to charge the same amount for the tickets.

15:16Speaker 2:So they use other methods to stand out, like the hostesses.

15:24Speaker 5:Yes, having attractive women and attractive uniforms and good food on the airplanes was all part of marketing and it was all important.

15:34Speaker 2:Of course, being in shape is important for stewardesses because you do need to be physically fit to do the job, but also it's about having an attractive appearance. According to Life magazine, American airlines stewardesses were quote reasonably pretty and slender, especially around the hips, which will be at the eye level of passengers, i e. Mail passengers.

15:59Speaker 5:As a matter of fact, there's a great story about that. At one point a bunch of flight attenders some different airlines posed for Playboy, and so the press started calling airline executives and they called them the guy that was running East at the time. They said, what are you going to do? And he said, I'm going to discharge him, fire him right away. And they called me and I said, I'm going to advertise the fight there. They thought that was a much better plan.

16:27Speaker 2:So during your tenure, a female flight attendant, who was maybe five feet five inches tall, had to weigh one hundred and twenty nine pounds or less, and I know a lot of them ended up being prescribed amphetamines and other pills to keep their weight down. Did you ever think about removing or changing those limitations while you were American?

16:47Speaker 5:No, I think we're going to follow the crowd in that respect. There's no point in trying to be an outlier in the areas where the public isn't ready for that attitude to prevail.

17:02Speaker 2:Do you think it was difficult for the women to maintain those weight standards.

17:06Speaker 5:I don't have any idea.

17:10Speaker 2:For Pat Gibbs. Maintaining a low weight wasn't difficult with her little black pills. Once she's on them, she doesn't even feel like eating. But she has a new problem.

17:24Speaker 1:I would try to sleep in the daytime. I really couldn't sleep because I kept waking up thinking somebody was breaking in to my bedroom.

17:38Speaker 2:Was it a stalker, a rapist, a murderer? There were weirdos who would harassed stewardesses, masturbating outside the compounds where they lived, or was it none of the above? In reality, Pat was experiencing some of the all time classic side effects of amphetamines restlessness, mood swings, paranoid delusions, hallucinations, and psychosis.

18:04Speaker 1:I was trying to get paranoid about people trying to break into my bedroom, trying to kill me or something. I was completely convinced that they were.

18:32Speaker 2:There were plenty of things that bug Pat about the Flight Attendants Labor Union when she attended one of their meetings. You might remember she didn't like the smoking, the swearing, the beer, but the greatest sin of all not being practical.

18:49Speaker 1:I just thought, why be in a union? If this is how they act, what are they going to do? How do they make it change? You should have a plan if you need to make a change. I wanted nothing to do with the union. They were just beer drinkers and just bitching and moaning, and to me it was like, that's not constructive.

19:16Speaker 2:That's true, But as a beer drinking complainer myself, I have a lot of sympathy with them. Well I do now too, despite having no interest in joining their ranks. In the summer of nineteen sixty two, Pat found herself in the unlikely position of being a union leader. The others had voted her in against her will because they were so desperate for support in their fight against management. Soon after her involuntary election, the head of the union, Nancy Collins, called Pat and said, you've got your first union job, a grievance case representing a fellow stewardess. Pat said, I don't want to do it. Nancy Collins said you have to.

20:00Speaker 1:Well, after a long conversation with me, she convinced me to just go and meet the grieve at Pat SOUCHECKI, who I will never forget. We met at the airport. I said, well, what did you do? Why are we here? She said, I got suspended three days because I spilled coffee on my summer uniform going into Chicago. Because it was Saturday night and it was late, I couldn't get it clean before leaving Sunday morning. I said, well, what do you want me to do? And she said to me, well, I don't know you're the union person. I said, well, no, I'm just here because Nancy Collins asked me to be here with you. She sent me this little ten page book to read.

21:01Speaker 2:If Pat had opened that book, she might have learned all kinds of things about unions, like how on the surface. Unions can seem like a confusing soup of acronyms, but these organizations can be formidable for big companies like American Airlines. It's easy for them to ignore or get rid of any individual flight attendant that has a problem, but you can't run an airline without flight attendants, so when they stick together, they have a lot of power. That power is even greater when the flight attendants join with other airline workers like mechanics, baggage handlers, and ground crew. Unions use this collective power to negotiate agreements with companies for better pay, say for working conditions, etc. At the time Pat started at American Airlines in the nineteen sixties. The stewardesses are part of Alpha, and that union is affiliated to the much larger Transport Workers Union also known as the TWU. Most of the other members are subway workers and bus drivers. If a member of their union is mistreated by their employer, they help them defile a grievance.

22:18Speaker 2:And let me just explain grievances, because there are going to be a lot of them in this series. Here's an example. You're an employee of a company and you have an issue. Let's say you got suspended for turning up late. Just once you think it's unfair, Well, you lodge a grievance. You might do a meeting with the union rep. That's a person on your side and someone from the company. Their job is to defend the company's actions. An investigation might be launched, and if you don't like the outcome, you can appeal it. It's like a mini court case within a company. And with the stewardess's part of a giant union like the TWU, theyd have a fighting chance to stand up for themselves, and all the workers who are members of the TWU, including the stewardesses, pay monthly membership dues so that the union has the financial resources to back up their strength in numbers. Some stewardesses even put their hands up to be union reps, which means they help their fellow members at work. This is the kind of information Pat would have learned had she read the ten page book ahead of the grievance. Instead,

23:30Speaker 2:she did not. As a result, Pat was like a newborn giraffe in terms of union knowledge, stumbling around thinking what do we do about overturning the suspension? I mean, it's just a coffee stain. Surely the bosses are being too harsh on pats Uchecki. Well, let's start with this meeting. The union has set up with the boss.

23:56Speaker 1:When we went to the airport and went into the operations area, the base manager came out.

24:05Speaker 2:What was his name, Ed Trapp Ed Trapp ed Trap. He came with a reputation. Pat was thinking back to what those union women had said about him in the meeting.

24:18Speaker 1:So they said, you know that Trap man, he's like totally overboard. He just treats the female supervisors like shit more complaining.

24:34Speaker 2:Pat had thought Pat had seen Ed Trap around and didn't think he was a bad guy. Surely Ed could sort out this issue.

24:43Speaker 1:And he came out and he said, oh, you must be Pat Gibbs. I said, yes, mister Trap, i am. And he said, well, Pat, you just sit down here and Pat suit Checkie and I are going to go in and have the grievance hearing. So I said, yes, sir, and I sat down outside where the urine was.

25:07Speaker 2:While Pat was waiting, she finally decided to take a look at the Unions for Dummies booklet from Nancy Collins.

25:15Speaker 1:And I get to maybe page five or six, and it says you should not let the grievance go in by themselves. And I started thinking, I think I was supposed to be in the meeting from this little book. And then it says, if they call you by your first name, you call them by their first name. And I thought, oh, man, I've been had.

25:47Speaker 2:Pat called Ed Trapp, mister trap and mister Trapp he called her Pat. And she's sitting outside. Surely Ed knows she's meant to be inside. Pat feels a red wave washed across her face.

26:06Speaker 1:All of a sudden, door opens and outcomes Ed and Pat suit Jackie, and he said she lost. And I looked at him and I said, of course she did. Ed she lost because I was supposed to be in there. And I said, this will never happen again to me, and you will not make me look like a fool. And so I said to Pat, let's go. And then I turned to him and I said, Ed, I'm going to win this grievance. You'll be sorry. I stormed out of operations and slammed the door.

27:06Speaker 2:Tell us what happened next, Well.

27:08Speaker 1:I've felt like I was made a fool of.

27:11Speaker 2:Pat is not over the situation with Ed Trapp. She knows he'd taken advantage of her ignorance. She should have been in that grievance hearing with Pat Zuchecki. Ed had triggered Pat's pet peeve rule breaking. She didn't like it when stewardesses didn't adhere to things like the uniform codes. Pat started realizing that people in management they aren't following the rules either, and maybe were the rules just in place to control the stewardesses while the higher ups did whatever they liked. These thoughts swirled, Pat decides to double down.

27:55Speaker 2:The only way she'll make sure the company follows the rules is to learn the ropes of what it takes to be a heavyweight union rep.

28:02Speaker 1:I started reading as much as I could about what a union rep was supposed to do. There weren't any course books on how to be a union rep. You know, I've watched a few union movies.

28:18Speaker 4:Oh really, Yeah, the auto workers are jubilant they won the first union contract in the history of the industry.

28:34Speaker 2:Pat was slowly getting a handle on this whole union thing from documentaries like this one actually produced by the CIA.

28:43Speaker 4:There's a story of how labor won the right in America to organize and to bargain collectively with management. A wave of organizing sweeps the country.

28:52Speaker 2:Pat realized you could have real power in a union, especially if you're allied with one as big as the TWU, the power to stand up to management, the power to stand up to ed trap. Can we talk about the appeal for Patsucheki, how the appeal went and what happened.

29:15Speaker 1:It was with the VP for Flight Service. I sat down and just had written out all the points that I was going to make, and I kept saying, what should she have done differently? Here?

29:33Speaker 2:Uh huh?

29:34Speaker 1:You know she had to go to the hotel. Should she have delayed to pick up for the crew or should she have gone to the hotel and then at midnight go around looking for dry clingers?

29:47Speaker 2:I mean common sense questions?

29:49Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, they were. And once you started pointing out the common sense part of that, you know, the guy just finally said, well, well I see her point. Why it happened, then why she should be reinstated. So I did end up winning the grievance.

30:16Speaker 2:The union response with the backing of the TWU worked. Pat Tucheki was forgiven for her outrageous wearing of a coffee stained uniform. She was back on the line and her manager handed over a check an award to compensate her for her lost income.

30:34Speaker 1:Well, of course, once I had the award, I wanted to run back and throw it on Ed Trapp's desk, but Nancy said, that's not a smart move. Don't gloat, right, just take the win. So much fun to gloat, though I would gloat with other people.

30:56Speaker 2:Right, What do you think that that moment taught you winning that appeal? Like, what was a lesson that you took away from that?

31:06Speaker 1:Don't give up? Fight back? The bottom line was I wanted because I started using basic common sense that I had, But what I didn't have was confidence. I was starting to really stand up for what I viewed as an injustice.

31:30Speaker 2:After this experience, Pat noticed a change. Her dream to be part of American Airlines management was fading away as a very different aspiration emerged, being an active and maybe one day senior member of the union.

31:46Speaker 1:And so I thought, well, there's an election coming up soon, I could run for the chair position.

31:57Speaker 2:After she won the appeal, Pat headed back home, and, like every day, she popped a pill. But there's still a feeling she can't shake that someone is trying to break into her house.

32:10Speaker 1:I did go into my bedroom thinking I'm going to lay down and try to take a nap. I had been, of course, taking those pills, so I was still hyper somewhat, but I thought I need to lay down here. So I did, and I was looking up at the window, and I started seeing like shadows across the window, and I thought, who is that? I started seeing like body shapes. I was really a little bit on the panic side then, so I got up, walked around, and every time I would lay down, I would start glancing at the window and seeing things go past the window. I started thinking, no, there's something else going on. I've got to really regroup you.

33:26Speaker 2:Pat went to see the American Airlines Company doctor about these weird visions. She finally wanted to know what medication she's been taking.

33:36Speaker 1:When I finally ask what is this, he said, well, it's amphetamines. Like amphetamines, it's no big deal. I mean, have you ever done speed? That's what it is.

33:52Speaker 2:How did you react? What did you think when he told you that?

33:55Speaker 1:I just thought, no big deal. It is what I thought, Like I had to take them to keep the weight off.

34:03Speaker 2:I mean, it must sound so scary to be having those delusions.

34:08Speaker 1:It is, but you know, it's either your job or delusions, which one.

34:22Speaker 2:Pat goes back home. She looks down at what she now knows is an amphetamine. What's more frightening, hallucinating a burglar or losing your livelihood? Pat has made up her mind. She puts a pill in her mouth and swallows it. How long were you taking the pills?

34:46Speaker 1:For a long time. I think I was on them for like at least five years.

34:57Speaker 2:Cut to one day in July nineteenth sixty five, Pat is summoned unexpectedly to the airport.

35:05Speaker 1:My supervisor had me sit down and she said, I'm going to have to sever you or something. I was thinking, what's she talking about? She's going to kill me or something.

35:17Speaker 2:No, this isn't a delusion. Pat is being fired.

35:23Speaker 1:I need your ID card, I need all your manuals. She said, do not come back in this office again. I was very upset because I felt like a big failure, and so I cried my little eyes out.

35:42Speaker 2:What reason did she give for firing you?

35:45Speaker 5:That?

35:45Speaker 1:I wrote a check to the hotel to get cash and it was returned to the hotel for insufficient funds.

35:55Speaker 2:Pat had written a bad check accidentally, mind you, A friend was to deposit her paycheck but forgot, But the supervisor says, stewardess's checks bouncing made American airlines look bad. So Pat hands in her id and goes home.

36:13Speaker 1:For me, it was really a difficult time because I was convinced that once I was fired, my hands and feet were going to fall off. I was just going to fall apart as a person.

36:27Speaker 2:After a few days of wallowing, Pat turned a corner.

36:31Speaker 1:I started realizing that just because I got fired didn't mean that my life was over.

36:42Speaker 2:Her metamorphosis from straight laced tattletale into militant unionist was underway. She decided to challenge her firing to file a grievance.

36:55Speaker 1:The first two hearings, I lost, You lose, you lose.

37:02Speaker 2:But hey, third times a charm right.

37:05Speaker 1:I got a letter saying I've been reinstated, but no back pay. I was just glad when I was told I had won the case.

37:21Speaker 2:How did that change things for you? This whole process of being terminated and then having to go through this extensive grievance process what was the upshot of all this for you in the way that you thought about your job?

37:34Speaker 1:Well, of course I started thinking more about a lot of injustices in the job. If you didn't hold a position in the union, or if you didn't know somebody that could help you in the union, you would have been toast.

37:55Speaker 2:As time goes on, Pet's starting to suspect that maybe it wasn't really the bad check that got her fired.

38:02Speaker 1:Firing me was better for them because I was starting to have union meetings and starting to file grievances for other people. So I was becoming a problem for management, Yes, because I was starting to show others this is how you fight back. That was done to say, see if we can fire your union rep, there's nothing to stop us from disciplining you, firing you, right, and so you better stay in line.

38:42Speaker 2:This is just Pat's hunch. There's no evidence that that was American Airlines motivation. But that gut feeling turns into a fire in her belly.

38:51Speaker 1:That's just got me more invested in being a union rep.

38:57Speaker 2:Yeah.

38:57Speaker 1:I might have worked on some people, but yeah, it didn't work on me too well.

39:10Speaker 2:Coming up on flight or fight, Pet goes on to become a fishbone in the throat of American airlines management.

39:18Speaker 1:I evolved into understanding we had to fight for.

39:24Speaker 2:Change, joining a chorus of women weaponizing unions and the law to revolutionize the profession of stewardess. I got tired of what they were doing to us.

39:35Speaker 3:I didn't feel like sitting back and allowing it to take place was a good idea.

39:40Speaker 1:Fighting back feels good because it feels powerful. Even if you know you're not going to win. You want your opponent to know they've been in a fight.

39:58Speaker 2:The Girlfriends Flight or Fight is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. This podcast is hosted by me Now McShane Wolfhart. The senior producer and writer is Saskia Collett. Our editor is Joe Meek. The assistant producer Isabella Saltiel. Production management from Scharie Houston and Joe Savage. Fact checking by Fendall Fulton, Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempsen. Original music by Sholto. The Girlfriend's theme was composed by Nicholas Alexander with vocals by Gina Walters. Music supervision from Nicholas Alexander and Saskia Collett. The series artwork was designed by Christina Limkool.

40:45Speaker 2:Novel's director of development is Selina Metta. Willard Foxton is our creative director of Development. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are executive producers for novel. Katrina Norvell and Nicki Etoor are the executive producers from iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson. You heard archive from pan Am, United Airlines, RKO, Pathay and American Airlines that was revoiced by actors Matthew Rutledge, Cam Cornelius, Andrea Petrilli and Amelia Barella