Elena Michael Michael 1

Mr. Rash
AP World History 4B
April 9, 2021
The World Wars:Women And Their Objectification In The Media

Research Question: This investigation will explore the question: To what extent did world wars,

despite its benefits on the women's suffrage and workforce movement, lead to the media's

objectification of women through promotional propaganda in the United States throughout the

20th century,

Source A is “American Women and the Great War.” by Lynn Dumeheil. The origin of this

secondary source is beneficial as Dumenil is a professor at Occidental College, specializing in

U.S social and cultural History since the Civil War. Additionally, this article was published in

the year 2002, which allowed Dumeheil to broaden her knowledge through research by analyzing

a variety of sources and viewpoints. Dumeheil was limited in her argument due to the fact that

she couldn't grasp the perspective of women living in that period. The purpose of Dumenheils

article is to discuss the way the government used to communicate with the people and decided to

subliminally message them through utilizing those magazines to market patriotism to the people

by making women the face of the movement. This source helps answer the research question as

it offers knowledge on the culture of American women at the time and the way in which they

were portrayed in the media, which offers insight towards how the media representation would

later lead into objectification, despite the struggles women faced to keep America's economy

stable.

Source B is “Against their own weakness: Policing Sexuality and Women in San Antonio,

Texas, during World War I" by Courtney Q Shah. Courtney Q. Shah is a Women's Studies

graduate at Duke University and the author of “Sex Ed, Segregated: The Quest for Sexual

Knowledge in Progressive-Era America, Social History of Medicine" Additionally this article

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was published in 2010 which made it able to find different viewpoints and sources to provide

evidence for her argument on the issue of society regarding womens self expression. Shah's

argument may have been limited due to her bias on her views of feminism as she is a Women's

Studies graduate which is reflected in her work due to her tone in the passage and negative

attitude towards the way the society and culture portrayed women who took control of their

bodies and sexuality.

The focus of this investigation will be to discuss the manipulative nature of

governmental and commercial advertising through the re-embedding of femininity and gender

roles to achieve an expected public impact and how that directly leads to objectification of

women through the media throughout the 20th century. The Women's Suffrage movement proved

that women were capable of adapting to harsh working conditions without the pity of men, yet

were still seen as replaceable and less valuable as the male labor force. Women were objectified

as precious items who needed saving from the enemy line or as diseases and threats to the war

effort if they expressed their sexuality. Pin-Up girls featured in the media and film helped

objectify women, due to no fault of their own, but due to the psychological nature of male gaze.

While both World Wars that occurred in the 20th century benefited the women's labor movement

immensely, they both demonstrated the sheer influence of governmental and commercial

advertising by subconsciously objectifying women in that medium, under false pretenses of

gender roles.

Women have been expected to single handedly deal with issues revolving around the

home, which is reflected in the female housewife stereotype. In the early to mid 19th century,

women were viewed as child bearing machines and caretakers for children in a patriarchal

society.(Dumenil 35) Over the twentieth century, however, women's rights revolutionary
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movements took prominence and opened up women to a possibility of promising professional

careers as well as domestic ones. During 1914-1918, the role of women expanded to

accommodate for the public needs during the war. “In the cities, women took jobs as streetcar

conductors and postal carriers and found employment in shipbuilding and other heavy

manufacturing that previously had been closed to them”(Dumenil 36) The drain on the labor pool

created a need for new workers, a need that only women could fill by making drastic changes

from their housewife duties to keep the economy functioning. Women were able to broaden their

horizons and gain new work experience as munition, clerical and police workers in industries

that had previously discriminated against them. These newfound responsibilities, as stated,

helped women realize that they were capable of more than just duties revolving around the

household.These employment opportunities, however, were temporary and were given back to

the veterans returning in 1918.(Mogan 4) Even though these women were forced out of the jobs

that they had kept running, this short experience of individuality and freedom inspired them to

prompt a social justice movement that would occur in the 1910s that would award them the right

to vote due to the 19th amendment to the US constitution in 1920. The women's right labor

movement began in 1848, taking off in 1890 when the National American Woman Suffrage

Association was formed due to the NWSA and the AWSA wanting to combine forces to make a

larger impact on Congress to further the Women's Suffrage movement. The NAWSA supported

the war feverently due to the fact that it would help prove the capability of women while men

were fighting overseas.(Wayne 103) Part of this is due to the World Wars, which conditioned

women into taking over the labourpool due to the quantity of men who had gone to fight

overseas. Their increased responsibilities was the catalyst these women needed to stand up and

make a change for themselves against an oppressive male dominated society. “But despite the
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fact that women had proven, according to one manufacturer, that there is hardly a line of work to

which a woman cannot adapt herself, women's postwar opportunities in blue-collar work,

especially for black women, contracted to their prewar status” (Dumenheil 36).The quote is

discussing the importance of the World Wars effects on the Women's Suffrage movement and

how the void in the American workforce helped prove the capability of women by exemplifying

the important nature of the war for women's rights movement as it proved their adaptation skills

compared to the dependent image that everyone had previously believed. Despite women

coming into their new roles in society as people who were allowed to have political opinions,

that didn't stop the government and corporations from capitalizing on their feminie nature,which

they consequently turned into a marketing strategy.

The role of women was very encompassed during the World Wars, as one one hand they

had the sole responsibility of maintaining the country's economy and running their home oriented

hemispheres, while being infantilized and commodified as a reward for returning soldiers

partially due to the media's marketing strategies. Photographs of women were frequently used in

propaganda posters from the US government in both Wars to enlist common themes of

femininity in advertisements to appeal male gaze and to encourage soldiers to enlist and protect

their nations. Preserving ideologies of traditional feminine roles in society through use of

propaganda kept women in the classic domestic roles as solely housewives and mothers.(Shover)

“Despite the fact that women received new forms of agency during the war years, propaganda

became an effective way to define and limit women’s sexuality and domesticity” (Omeka 3) This

quote is found in the introductory paragraph of this article, which discusses the direction of the

content that specifically related to the category of Women and propaganda. The producers of

these enlistment posters specifically used pictures of women specifically to encourage soldiers to
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enlist for war and to receive more participation in the Red Cross, mobilization, and war

preservation efforts. They used conventionally attractive women who were more appealing to a

potential soldier's eyes to initiate male desire to be emasculated.(Omeka 3) If these women did

not adhere to the strict guidelines set for them by society, then they would be villainized as

“diseases'' and threats to the war effort. “unbridled sexuality were viewed as threats to the health

of war soldiers, the war efforts, and the very standards of American society” (Shah 459) Women

who were “victim to prostitution” were seen as a diesease and marketed on posters as threats

who werent able to be constrained by the oppressive shackles of societies views on “morality”.

Government propaganda specifically targeted women who embrace their sexuality as a

personified version of diseases who were trying to undermine the war efforts. When they did

adhere to their duties as proper women to continue running the household and the added pressure

of keeping the American economy running, they were viewed as “rewards'' for soldiers to come

home too.

Wartime propaganda portrayed women as sexually vulnerable victims subject to the

hypersexual desires of the enemy which reinforced the idea that women were fragile beings

constantly in need of protection from brave American men. A poster commissioned by the Allied

Forces and features a young woman cradling an infant. (Chetty 34) The woman is facing the

audience, compelled unsuspecting to the shadow of claws with a swastika symbol on them. The

poster features the words ``KEEP THESE HANDS OFF!” and asks the audience to buy victory

bonds, presumably to help free the innocent woman and child from the crutches of the petrifying

hand. As mentioned in the quote, this poster is clearly buying into the innocence of a womens

nature and expects the masculine audience to exert their patriarchal control over her, as she is

clearly incapable of protecting herself on her own. Even after the war ended, the psychological
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effects of these propaganda continued to persist and kept women trapped in a cycle of

sexualization and objectification by their male counterparts which led to development of a new

marketing ploy.

Objectification of women continued on throughout the 20th century, partly due to the

media's exploitation of “pin-up” girls and the medidas manipulation of the female mindset which

made many women believe that they had an internal male gaze as their obligation to be

objectified by men as part of their feminine duties. These World War 2 promotional posters and

films employed the notion of femininity and glamour surrounding “pin-up girl” culture which

took off during World War 2. Pin-up girls had potential to serve as empowering and had the

ability to take their sexuality back without being subject to male gaze and did, to a degree, but

overall were controlled by a sexist, male-operated industry that exploited every single one of

these girls' actions to buy the male gaze by marketing these girls as rewards for soldiers, who

“pinned” their pictures up on their barrak walls. “surrogate object of sexual desire for soldiers far

from home 34, making it typical of a hegemony which endorses female objectification as a

means to civil defence, into which fed a sense of feminine sexual obligation and ‘beauty as duty’.

(Wright 105) This quote is in reference to popular pin up girls such as Betty Grable and Rita

Hayward, who were exploited by the media to show middle class American women that

objectification was a way of calling them beautiful and being objectified as a woman meant that

you meant your duty as a woman to please a male. (Wright 107) Men were allowed to see these

women as their “reward” and a belonging that they had right too and women were manipulated

into believing that they weren't enough and were required to be more similar to the pin-up girls if

they were patriotic, so that they could be “gifted” to the soldier”

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It therefore seems that World War II was indeed, responsible for the extent to which

women are objectified in the United States throughout the 20th century as a result of the women

labor workforce movement, the usage of women as marketing strategies, and the feature of pin

up girls in film and media during the mid and late 20th century.The women Labor Workforce

movement, while very powerful, showed that women were able to be replaced due to the decades

of generational belief that women were not capable enough to work and belonged in the

domestic sphere. Men overseas believed women were just a “trophy” for them to come home to

once the war ended and that they were holding their jobs for a temporary time till the real men

could return home and assist defenseless women once again. Women were featured in

propaganda posters during World Wars 1 and 2 which either villainized, if they refused to

comply, or infantilized them if they adhered to the strict social constructs forced upon them

making women believe that they had to follow to certain rules and act a certain way or they

wouldn't be validated by their male counterparts. Objectification of women continued far after

the Women's Suffrage movement achieved their goal due to media exploitation of pin up girls

and women vulnerability. Pin up girls, such as Betty Garble, were very popular throughout world

war 2 and reminded soldiers of the “women they were fighting for” as these girls served as

surrogates for their male gaze. World War II can therefore be seen as responsible for a number of

significant ideological changes regarding women’s employment but its influence was also

prominent in means of objectifying women through infantilizing their abilities or type casting

them as diseases if they refused to conform to the strict, gernational gender rules forced upon

them which led to a continuation in the cycle of women's objectification in the media.
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Reflection
The conduction of this investigation has allowed me to gain insight into some of the

methods used by historians and the challenges faced by historians. Throughout the research

process of thoroughly analyzing a historical question, I had to take into consideration the biases

and perspective of the author and how the translation of historical facts may have been botched

due to the lengthy translation of accurate facts from that time period and due to the patriarchal

viewpoint of the authors that did the majority of the writing in the mid 20th century. Also, since

women at the time weren't constantly sharing their perspective on the issues surrounding them, it

could have been harder for historians to empathize and analyze the effects of the World Wars.

While researching, sources such as JSTOR and the internet helped me pick sources that

could best help support my thesis. While researching, however, I noticed that it was harder to

find sources pertaining to my particular topic of propaganda in the media due to the limited

sources of media in the early and mid nineteenth century. Whilst trying to incorporate the little

knowledge I had along with analysis of my sources, I began to find sources that ahd

contraindicated dmy previously negative view. These new perspectives allowed me to try to fully

scope the range of emotions women in the 20th century felt with the changes happening around

them and how the viewed objectification of women in this period.

Works Cited
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Adhis Chetty. “Media Images of Women during War: Vehicles of Patriarchy's Agenda?” Agenda:
Empowering Women for Gender Equity, www.jstor.org/stable/4548112, 2004, JSTOR

Berberick, Stephanie Nicholl. "The objectification of women in mass media: Female self-image
in misogynist culture." The New York Sociologist 5.2 (2010).

Dumenil, Lynn. “American Women and the Great War.” OAH Magazine of History, vol. 17, no.
1, 2002, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25163562.

Mogan, Kelly. “Christy Girls and Women Workers: The Depiction of Women in World War I
Posters” Propaganda posters during World War I and depictions of women (nyhistory.org)

“OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile.” OAH,

www.oah.org/lectures/lecturers/view/1363/lynn-dumenil.

“Representations of Women in Propaganda.” Omeka RSS, Representations of Women in

Propaganda · Women's Roles on the Homefront · The United States in World War II:
Historical Debates about America at War (oberlinlibstaff.com)

Shah, Courtney Q. “‘Against Their Own Weakness’: Policing Sexuality and Women in San
Antonio, Texas, during World War I.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 19, no. 3,
2010, pp. 458–482. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40986335. 2010

Shah, Courtney Q..” Gender, Sexuality Feminist Studies,

gendersexualityfeminist.duke.edu/alumni/courtney-q-shah.

Shover, Michele J. "Roles and images of women in World War I propaganda." Politics & Society
5.4 (1975)

Wayne, Tiffany K. "National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)." Women's Suffrage: The
Complete Guide to the Nineteenth Amendment (2020): 103.

Wright, Ellen. Female sexuality, taste and respectability: an analysis of transatlantic media
discourse surrounding Hollywood glamour and film star pin-ups during WWII. Diss.
University of East Anglia, 2014.