Gee!! I Wish I Were a Man, I'd Join the Navy, Be a Man and Do It - United States Navy Recruiting Station

Label

This World War I-era poster depicts a woman dressed in a sailor’s uniform. Her image conforms to normative beauty standards for period propaganda, thereby attracting the attention of the poster’s intended audience: young heterosexual men of fighting age. Furthermore, the poster serves its recruiting function by linking its intended viewers’ sense of masculinity with military service. The text reminds the viewer that this woman would not have been permitted to serve in the navy, thereby reinforcing the idea that military service was exclusively the domain of men.

From the 2023 exhibition A Space for Dialogue 110, Constructing the Ideal Soldier, curated by Nathan Savo '24, Class of 1954 Intern

Course History

HIST 21, Modern American Thought and Culture, Spring 2019

HIST 21, Modern American Thought and Culture, Spring 2019

HIST 21, Modern American Thought and Culture, Spring 2019

Exhibition History

A Space for Dialogue 110, Constructing the Ideal Soldier, Nathan Savo, Class of 2024, Curator, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 7 January - 26 February 2023

Provenance

Source unknown.

Catalogue Raisonne

Rawls, p. 80.

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Subjects