Glamour-izing Military Service: Army Recruitment for Women in Vietnam-Era Advertisements

Abstract

In the late 1960s, popular women's magazine advertisements for the Women's Army Corps and Nurse Corps featured militarized femininity at its finest. The recruiting ads depicted military service as an inclusive, exciting environment in which young women could explore job opportunities, meet male suitors, travel, and build self-esteem. Despite shifting cultural attitudes toward American women's workforce participation, the construction of military femininity in these Vietnam-era ads aligned neatly with broader media messages about gender and heteronormative rituals of courtship. Examining the mass mediation of military messages included in female-focused magazines reveals cultural and historical aspects of advertising, public relations, representation, and print media as they emerge in primary documents.

Notes

1 Morris Janowitz and Charles C. Moskos, Jr. “Report on Five Years of the Volunteer Force: 1973–1978 in January 1979,” in Manpower Research and Advisory Services Records 1971–1994, box 5 folder 8, Archives Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Smithsonian Institution Library, Washington, DC.

2 Ibid.

3 Ads like the ones contained in this article ran in periodicals such as Glamour, Life, Senior Scholastic, Ebony, Mademoiselle, RN Magazine, and the American Journal of Nursing.

4 Martin Binkin and Shirley J. Bach, Studies in Defense Policy: Women and the Military (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1977), 12–13.

5 Ibid.

6 Estelle Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002).

7 Nancy MacLean, The American Women's Movement, 1945–2000: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford, 2008); Stephanie Gilmore and Sara Evans, Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-wave Feminism in the United States (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008).

8 For historical examinations of the advertising industry in America, see Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (New York: Vintage, 1985); Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976); Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

9 For historical analysis of the impact of the creative revolution in advertising, see Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 88–103. For overviews of Bill Bernbach and DDB, see Lawrence R. Samuel, “Thinking Smaller: Bill Bernbach and the Creative Revolution in Advertising of the 1950s,” Advertising and Society Review 13, no. 3 (2012); and Doris Willens, Nobody's Perfect: Bill Bernbach and the Golden Age of Advertising (Lexington, KY: CreateSpace, 2009).

10 N. W. Ayer and Son was the Philadelphia-based advertising agency hired by the army to create recruitment and retention campaigns. Commonly, the company was referred to as “Ayer.”

11 Kim Heikkila, Sisterhood of War: Minnesota Women in Vietnam (Minneapolis: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2011); Ron Steinman, Women in Vietnam: The Oral History (New York: TV Books, 2000); Elizabeth Norman, Women at War: The Story of Fifty Military Nurses Who Served in Vietnam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990).

12 Beth Bailey, America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

13 Kara Dixon Vuic, Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).

14 Nancy Walker, Shaping Our Mothers’ World: American Women's Magazines (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2000); Carolyn Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995).

15 Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, xviii.

16 T. J. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

17 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: BBC/Penguin Books, 1973).

18 K. A. Goudreau, “Draft-Seminar on Recruiting Research, 1/30/1978,” in Manpower Research and Advisory Services Records 1971–1994, box 5 folder 1, Archives Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Smithsonian Institution Library, Washington, DC.

19 Professionals from all sectors of the advertising industry volunteered their time and expertise to assist the Committee on Public Information during World War I and the Office of War Information during World War II. During World War II, these professionals opted to formalize their work by creating the War Advertising Council. This eventually became the Ad Council that still operates today. See Ad Council, Matters of Choice: Advertising in the Public Interest the Advertising Council (1942–2002) Undated 2002 (approx.).

20 Charles DeBenedetti, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement in the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990); Adam Garfinkle, Telltale Hearts: The Origins and Impact of the Vietnam Anti-War Movement (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997); Fred Halstead, Out Now: A Participant's Account of the Movement in the United States against the Vietnam War (New York: Monad Press, 1978); Melvin Small, Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America's Hearts and Minds (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002).

21 Mimi L. Minick, Vanessa Broussard Simmons, and Katie Richards, Unpublished, “N. W. Ayer Advertising Agency Collection, 1849–1851, 1869–2001: History,” Washington, DC: National Museum of American History Archives Center Library, 2004.

22 Bernard Rostker, I Want You!: The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2006), 2–4.

23 Although she focuses on reproductive rights, Rickie Solinger has written extensively about the politics and rhetoric of choice in the United States. Rickie Solinger, Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001).

24 The opening of Belkin's book Bring Me Men details a story of a therapist who counseled preoperative, male-to-female transgender Vietnam veterans. Vets described their struggles with gender identity and the great lengths taken in the name of proving masculinity. Although this example might seem too specific to convey a broad portrait of military masculinity, Belkin points out that this desire to prove manliness in military spaces transcends the community of transgender vets; Aaron Belkin, Bring Me Men: Military Masculinity and the Benign Façade of American Empire, 1898–2001 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

25 Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives (London: Pandora Press, 1983); Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014).

26 Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

27 Melissa T. Brown, Enlisting Masculinity: The Construction of Gender in US Military Recruiting Advertising during the All-Volunteer Force (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

28 Selective Service System, “The Vietnam Lotteries,” Selective Service System Website, accessed November 8, 2016, https://www.sss.gov/About/History-And-Records/lotter1.

29 Christian G. Appy, Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 6–7.

30 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Your Future, Your Decision, Choose Army,” 1970, print ad series, National Museum of American History Archives Center Library, Smithsonian Institution (hereafter cited as NMAH).

31 Ibid.

32 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Join now. Go later,” 1970, print ad, NMAH.

33 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Your Future, Your Decision (sitting with gun),” 1970, print ad, NMAH; N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Your Future, Your Decision, (standing with gun),” 1970, print ad, NMAH.

34 Ibid.

35 For one of many psychological studies evaluating the mental health impact of the Vietnam-era military draft on those draft-eligible men in the United States, see Norman Hearst and Thomas B. Newman, “Proving Cause and Effect in Traumatic Stress: The Draft Lottery as a Human Experiment,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 1, no. 2 (1988): 173–180.

36 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Ted Regan, Interview by Robert K. Griffith (25 August 1983),” Box 7, Folder 30, NMAH, SI.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Bailey, America's Army, 71.

40 Ibid.

41 For histories of the WAAC and the WAC, see Bettie J. Morden, The Women's Army Corps, 1945–1978, CMH Pub 30-14 (Washington, DC: United States Army Center of Military History, 2000). See also Jeanne Holm, Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution (New York: Presidio Press, 1993).

42 Ibid.

43 Running from 1966–1971, That Girl was a popular situation comedy starring Marlo Thomas, who also created the series. The quirky, clever central character was an aspiring actress living in New York City, making ends meet through temporary employment and odd jobs. Television historians regard this show to be a logical predecessor to future female-fronted situation comedies starring single, career-focused women protagonists like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Murphy Brown. For more on the historical and popular cultural impact of That Girl, see “Marlo Thomas on the Legacy of That Girl,” in Archive of American Television website, accessed 15 November 2016, http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/marlo-thomas#.

44 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Intelligence Analyst,” 1968, print ad, NMAH.

45 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Psychological Warfare,” 1968, print ad, NMAH.

46 Ibid.

47 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “The Army Needs Girls,” 1968, print ad, NMAH.

48 Leisa Meyer, Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women's Army Corps during World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); and Morden, The Women's Army Corps.

49 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Even the General,” 1968, print ad, NMAH.

50 Ibid.

51 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Great Myths of the WAC,” 1969, print ad, NMAH.

52 Ibid.

53 Kara Dixon Vuic in Officer, Nurse, Woman (2011) offers in her examination of the Nurse Corps in Vietnam that for decades, civilian attitudes regarding military women were negative, and service members were stereotyped to be either desperate husband-hunters or masculine females likely to be lesbians.

54 Morden, The Women's Army Corps; Holm, Women in the Military.

55 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “If I Join the WAC,” 1969, print ad, NMAH.

56 Holm, Women in the Military. See also Kathryn Marshall, In the Combat Zone: An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam, 1966–1975 (Boston: Little Brown, 1987).

57 Vuic, Officer, Nurse, Woman, 110.

58 N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, “Thanks,” 1970, print ad, NMAH.