Originally Posted by
1apreferably
It would seem, given the above, that English is not your first language. The term flight attendant will, as 'American crap' is absorbed around the world, become the common expression.
The misogynistic 'we will call them what we've always called them' approach to female workers will eventually disappear.
It's obvious you're American.
We call female stewardesses that, and the male version is a steward. Notice that 'stewardess' is simply a female version of 'steward', just as 'princess' is the female version of 'prince'. (Though now that I think of it, you don't have those either.) In fact, this page, for me, presents an ad that does exactly that:
http://www.cyberhq.nl/~marco/tio.png
The british apparently call their stewardesses 'air hostesses', with the male version presumably being an 'air host'. It's exactly the same concept. This will not change any time soon.
Why every term must be unisex is not something we non-Americans understand. How would we call our queens? Our princesses? Our wives? Or to keep it job-related, our midwives? Our nurses (in my native language, this translates directly to 'sister')? Our preschool teachers (again a term that has been unisexed in English but not in my native language, where it translates somewhat to 'madam').
Only in English is everything unisexed. In Dutch most words that describe a person have male and female versions. (There are some exceptions, notably person itself.) The French overhaul most of their sentences to account for genger changes. Italian, spanish, german: they all have gender-specific versions of words describing people.
Please, don't equate American to what the rest of the world does. Worse, please don't assume American ways and expressions will be 'absorbed around the world'. True, it happens in some cases but it is absolutely not the norm. Assuming it is, to us, is like taking a big fat dump our our individual identities, traditions and languages. Obviously we ask you to refrain from that.