AT LAST, I looked like the airline pilot I had long planned to be, striding purposefully through the terminal on my way to your next destination: close-cropped hair, navy blue uniform, billowing ankle-length overcoat. It was 1996, and I had just become a Trans World Airlines flight engineer on the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, based in New York City. No female airline pilot wants to look too butch, or worse, too feminine. The hardest part was finding shoes. When you're preflighting an aircraft, you can't run around a snow-covered ramp in high heels. I had met one female pilot sporting steel-toe boots. I found medium-heel loafers in which I could sprint down the gateway to catch a commuter flight home to the West Coast.
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