Variety of depictions of women in U.S. World War II posters. Such images, like the narratives in general, were by no means unique to U.S. propaganda. Not all women in U.S. posters were American: some were the victims of Nazi or Japanese rape, ravage, torture, and political repression. By and large, images of American women were seductively favorable. Women in nurse or Red Cross uniforms appeared assertive, attractive, patriotic, and capable. Countless images of strong, hardworking factory employees such as the Rosie the Riveter on recruiting and morale-building posters testified to women’s contributions to the war effort. Some images suggested the self-sacrificing, patient woman who stoically suffered through war’s home front hardships as she waited at the hearth for a husband or son’s return. But other images presented women as naively careless, or even as "enemy agents" or "saboteuses;" women whose loose lips or loose sexual ways put American men in danger, either of being torpedoed or brought down by a venereal disease.
A massive poster campaign by the United States during World War II manifested a combination of advertising, political propaganda, and art. The Office of War Information took command, working with other government agencies, the military, writers, artists, and corporate groups to produce such stunning graphics as the Four Freedom posters by realist Norman Rockwell, modernist artist Ben Shahn’s exhortations to oppose fascism, or the more abstract poster urging increased production, "Give ‘Em Both Barrels" by Jean Carlu. Millions of posters were slapped up on factory walls, at bus stops, in grocery stores, on billboards, in schools, and offices. They spoke to the nation’s total mobilization with 10 million men in uniform, and 7 million women moving to another county or state to work. Printed in huge runs, in black and white or color, from the size of a notebook sheet to immense images, posters were part of "the most intense visual experience in the nation’s history" up to that time (Roeder 1993, 62).
The posters addressed all areas of home front life, as well as personnel serving overseas. Some posters were directed at encouraging desired behavior, from daily teeth brushing to saving fats, buying war bonds to planting victory gardens. Others aimed to restrict behavior, curtailing loose talk that might aid the enemy, stopping absenteeism or sloppy work habits, or curtailing the spread of venereal diseases. Clearly the posters suggest a mobilized nation that needed to rely on men and women’s conscious involvement in the war effort.
Poster and film images glorified and glamorized the roles of working women and suggested that a woman’s femininity need not be sacrificed. Whether fulfilling their duty in the home, factory, office, or military, women were portrayed as attractive, confident, and resolved to do their part to win the war. (From the National Archives Records and Administration exhibit, Powers of Persuasion 1994-1995).
At the same time, many posters relied on restrictive ly gendered views. Some highlighted traditionally maligned images of women, while the men who did bad things were made to look like bumbling idiots or just plain naive (the loose talking women and the men who chose the wrong woman). Others depicted the enemy, German and Japanese, as rats and other vicious animals.
Perhaps the most famous wartime image was the "We Can Do It" poster, which shows a muscular woman dressed for factory work. A Norman Rockwell poster shows another "Rosie the Riveter" with lunch box and welding tool at her side, fashioned after Michelangelo’s Isaiah (initially a cover of The Saturday Evening Post, this image helped introduce the iconic Rosie to the nation). Countless posters showed lipsticked, well-coiffed, appealing white women, at times alongside a uniformed man, sometimes peeking out from under a Jeep, urging women to join the Red Cross, Army nursing corps, or other war services.
More sinister images in the security campaign showed women as the ultimate lures to obtain precious military information. The poster "Wanted for Murder" suggested the mugshot of a woman who had perhaps inadvertently passed on war-related information. Posters that spoke about sexual relations offered the most consistently negative images of women. "She looked clean, but . . ." one poster moaned, suggesting that the line between clean and dirty or good and bad was nearly imperceptible. "Saboteuse," a yellowish poster declared, showing an infected woman lurking in a doorway while near-innocent soldiers sauntered by. These posters, along with those urging men to "take a pro" (a prophylactic), supplemented the military and public health organizations’ extensive campaign to curtail prostitution, teenage sexual promiscuity, and the spread of venereal disease, which took a serious toll on work-hours in the military. Such posters did not appeal to any sense of sexual morality other than the underlying fears of the sexually active woman.
U.S. War Posters
At least one viewer voiced objection to the negative depiction of women in some U.S. war posters: "American women who are knitting, rolling bandages, working long hours at war jobs and then carrying on with ‘women’s work’ at home—in short, taking over the countless drab duties to which no salary and no glory are attached, resent these unwarranted and presumptuous accusations which have no basis in fact, but from the time-worn gags of newspaper funny men."
—A letter from a resident of Hawaii to the Office of War Information,
from NARA “Powers of Persuasion” exhibit.
