Feminine, Competent, Submissive: A Multimodal Analysis of Depictions of Women in U.S. Wartime Persuasive Messages During World War I and World War II

Abstract

This analysis used Peirce's triadic approach to interpret 58 public depictions of women during the two world wars. The images, appearing in government posters or as ads and illustrations in U.S. magazines and newspapers, endeavored to convey the seriousness of the war effort and mobilize audiences to support it. Aligned in five thematic clusters (competence, domesticity, heterosexual attraction, beauty maintenance, and romantic longing), many invited polysemy through discrepant visual and verbal cues aimed at different audiences. Women as viewers and as objects of representation were addressed in the context of both citizenship and consumption. The analysis explicates ideological points about wartime gender relations and points to the objectification of women's bodies as implied sexual rewards for product purchase in WWII.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Easton Wollney

Easton Wollney is a PhD student in journalism at the University of Florida. She completed her bachelor's and master's degrees in the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University.

Miglena Sternadori

Miglena Sternadori is an associate professor of journalism at Texas Tech University. She is the author of Mediated Eros: Sexual Scripts Within and Across Cultures (Peter Lang, 2015) and coeditor of Gender and Work: Exploring Intersectionality, Resistance, and Identity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016). Her work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Journal of Media Psychology, Women's Studies in Communication, Newspaper Research Journal, Media Report to Women, Atlantic Journal of Communication, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Journal of Media Education. E-mail: [email protected]