She was particularly sharp-eyed for mentions of women pilots, studying their exploits as though reading tea leaves. She didn’t idolize them, the way she did male pilots, but envied them with a rawness that sometimes curdled into dislike. The obligatory photos of them powdering their noses in the cockpit disgusted her, and the fuss around Amelia Earhart, who was given credit for being the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air even though she’d merely been a passenger on the Friendship, baffled and annoyed her. You might as well celebrate a sack of ballast.
