Selling to soldiers: warrior hero masculinity and missing military women in Stars and Stripes’ Iraq war advertising

ABSTRACT

The Stars and Stripes newspaper is an important site for the study of gender in the US military because it has often been among the only news material available for deployed members of the armed forces at war. An analysis of advertising in Stars and Stripes during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003–2011) found that ads constructed and privileged a commodified, warrior hero masculinity unattainable by military women. The military identity of female servicemembers was often stripped from them in advertising, though they rarely appeared at all. Where women did appear, they were often depicted as the dependent helpmate/mother, as an embodied reward for the warrior hero, or as a powerless subordinate who needs rescue or financial support from the warrior hero. Even though military women performed ably in Operation Iraqi Freedom and soon after, saw all combat specialties opened to them, the ads in Stars and Stripes reproduced, and reflected, their marginalization in the US military.

KEYWORDS:

• Iraq war
• Stars and Stripes
• military
• warrior hero masculinity
• advertising

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Max Lederer (publisher) in discussion with the author, February 2016.

2. Some issues missing from the microfilm were obtained from Stars and Stripes’ Washington headquarters.

3. Stephen Lacy et al. recommend a sample size of nine constructed weeks for a daily newspaper content analysis covering a five-year period (Lacy et al. 2001). This corresponds to a 15 constructed week sample for the eight and a half year Iraq War. A random date generator was used to select 15 Mondays, 15 Tuesdays, 15 Wednesdays, and so on, during the study period, and corresponding issues of Stripes’ MidEast edition were examined on microfilm.

4. It is not uncommon to see military recruitment and reenlistment ads in Stars and Stripes even though many or most of its readers in Iraq were already in the military or were activated military reservists or National Guard members. Such ads seek to persuade readers to reenlist or perhaps recommend recruitment to someone back home. Especially during the early Iraq war years, the US military struggled to meet its recruitment targets (Kagan 2006).

5. Some very small photos containing large groups of people could have included men and women together in uniform, but the people pictured were too small, too far in the background, or too much in silhouette to identify as male or female.

6. This count does not include ads that were too small or dark to determine the sex of those in uniform.

7. One hundred and ten military women were killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Congressional Research Service 2020, 15).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cindy Elmore

Cindy Elmore is a professor in the School of Communication at East Carolina University, USA.