Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart steadily subverted conventional gender norms. She rejected stereotypical femininity through her habits, choices, and public image. Fleming is careful not to present this as effortless. In fact, much of the book examines how Earhart had to perform a careful balancing act: appealing to a public that required its female heroes to appear modest and composed while privately refusing to be submissive. 

Fleming shows that Earhart understood how image shaped opportunity. In a culture that viewed women pilots as novelties at best and liabilities at worst, Earhart had to appear competent but not threatening, ambitious but still feminine. Her public tone and persona reflected this balancing act. She created her own clothing line, claiming that she had “tried to put the freedom that [wa]s in flying into [her] clothes,” designing for “women who le[]d active lives” (59). She aligned herself with movement, function, and capability while still packaging that message in a feminine, sellable form.

Earhart was fully aware that her success carried symbolic weight. She intentionally used her fame to challenge assumptions about what women could and should do. While serving as a career counselor at Purdue University, she told students to resist cultural pressure and “dare to live” outside of marriage (83), encouraging them to take risks and pursue work in fields like engineering and agriculture.