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‘Who said this is a Man's War?’: propaganda, advertising discourse and the representation of war worker women during the Second World War
... While women are more likely to seek and trust information that relates to crises (Aldoory et al., 2010;Perreault et al., 2014), literature concerning their role in pandemics has been absent from health communication and public relations research. Throughout history, women facing crises have planted victory gardens, salvaged, and repurposed materials, and taken up jobs that were previously held by men (e.g., in World Wars I and II) (Lytle, 2017;Milkman & Milkman, 1976;Yesil, 2004). In addition, studies have shown women in crisis situations often put others before themselves (Vardeman & Aldoory, 2008). ...
Background: COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus SARS-COV-2, can create serious respiratory problems, or even death, for those affected. Individuals who share messages about its risks and related risk reduction behaviors have the potential to make a broader health impact. Early in the pandemic, some individuals made homemade masks to address the limited supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and posted about their efforts on social media. Aim: To understand the grassroots application of the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) theoretical model concerning effective messages in early phases of a crisis. Methods: Using both individual interviews and observations, researchers conducted a study of 15 Appalachian women making masks during the Covid-19 pandemic and analyzed 9 of their social media accounts. Results: Through interviews and observations, the researchers gained understanding as to how mask makers used social media to create and distribute masks and engage their communities. Social media messages often contained calls to action, and personal connections to the issue, and supported the mask makers’ efforts to reach a broader network of individuals. Discussion: An evaluation of the grassroots efforts of mask makers extends the CERC framework to the individual level. Conclusions: This study provides insight into the role of grassroots health advocacy, and the role of user-generated social media messaging in pandemic risk reduction.
... For instance, researchers have analyzed the impact of cultural imperialism in advertising (e.g., Bhattacharjee, 2017;Sengupta & Frith, 1997), or the effect of advertising from the Global North on values and ideals from the rest of the world (e.g., Karamullaoglu & Sandikci, 2019). Some studies adopt critical perspectives to analyze the impacts of (political or commercial) advertising from the Global North on non-dominant nations and minority groups (e.g., Chibuwe, 2013;Ghandeharion & Badrlou, 2018;Varman, 2019;Yesil, 2004). In the area of marketing, especially in the last few years, studies (mainly using a historical approach) have also critically analyzed geopolitical, imperial, and colonial aspects of advertising from the Global North, particularly those of the US advertising sector (e.g., Fasce, & Bini, 2015;Samuel, 2016;Tadajewski & Stole, 2016). ...
The purpose of this paper is to analyze, through a decolonial perspective and using a historical approach, the geopolitical and colonial elements present in the origins of the Advertising Self-Regulation System (ASRS), created by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), its internalization, promoted by the International Advertising Association (IAA), and its imposition in Latin America. To achieve this, the study focuses on discussing the creation of ASRS and the origins of its creator, ICC; the internalization of ASRS and the origins of its main sponsor, IAA; the influence of ASRS in the context of the Brazilian consumerist movement. Each event was studied considering the relations between the phenomena under analysis and the three colonialities theory. Therefore, each event was
related to a category, which was composed of subcategories that discussed each of the three colonialities). By adopting the decolonial perspective, it was possible to better understand how the system was used geopolitically to universalize Eurocentric concepts of consumerism.
... Specifically, Yesil's analysis of advertisements for female workers revealed a paradoxical gender messaging: while women were suggested to be capable of undertaking jobs previously reserved for men and to 'demonstrate their physical and mechanical competence', they were concomitantly told that their work was secondary to that of men and that traditional standards of femininity-home-making, family, beauty-still applied to them. 21 Yesil investigates how this contradictory discourse played out across media messages during the war years when women's wartime work was framed as necessary to support men in their war effort, rather than as something intrinsically valuable to women themselves. 22 This trend is very explicit in the wartime issues of NBC's staff magazine NBC Transmitter, which regularly featured photos of the replacement women undertaking men's technical roles. ...
This article examines the case of the Women’s Auxiliary Television Technical Staff (WATTS) of the Chicago television station WBKB: an all-female technical and production crew that operated from 1942 to 1947. In tracing the employment and work of the WATTS, this article examines, firstly, the conditions that enabled women to engage in television technical and production work. Secondly, this article considers the conditions that resulted in decline in the numbers of women working at the station in the post-war period, which were related to men’s return to work after the war, the shift in television’s evolution from experimental to professional and commercial, and, finally, to the gendered culture of work that emerged when men engaged in production work with women. Through an analysis of the trade and popular press discourses that first celebrated women’s television work and later dismissed it, women’s place in the earliest years of television is foregrounded.
... Thus, if women were to take on jobs usually done by men, they were depicted according to the level of femininity that they bring to the job, like the "angelic" girl conductors of the city buses (Kozuma, 1942c) who still did feminine things such as gossiping. As argued by Bilge Yesil (2004), wartime persuasion assured women that their femininity would still be intact if they took on jobs usually tied to men. More often than not, their femininity is packaged in such a way that it added something new to the position they take on, a kind of patronizing masculine gaze as these values added were usually based on stereotypically feminine traits such as beauty, gentleness, attention to fine details, and the like. ...
This article analyzes the visual depiction of women in the Tribune, the main propaganda newspaper of Japan in the Philippines during the Pacific War. Japanese wartime propaganda painted an image of a productive and cooperative Filipina, respectable and modest like her Japanese counterpart. The analysis reveals three motivations for depicting women in said light: to show a semblance of normalcy despite the turbulent war, to entice women to serve Japan's aims, and to disprove the Japanese women's image as subservient wives or entertainers while asserting the connection between the two countries. Analyzing the depiction of women in Japanese propaganda contributes to the understanding of war as a gendered phenomenon. Beyond seeing women as symbols of the private obligations for which men fight or as surrogate objects of sexual desire, the image of women was perceived to be instrumental in showcasing Japan's New Order.
... During World War II, makeup was used to disrupt wartime masculine codes of power (Delano 2000). Red lipstick, which was despised by Adolf Hitler, became a symbol of resilient femininity and patriotism (Goodman 1998;Yesil 2004). This was reflected in the names given to lipsticks, including "Fighting Red!", "Patriot Red!" and "Grenadier Red!". ...
Lipstick has been a dominant beauty practice across cultures and throughout history. Once deemed a sign of Satan, a potential health risk, and even an illegal product, lipstick has experienced centuries of controversy to secure its status as a marketplace icon – albeit a polarising one. Liberating to some; limiting to others. How have such tensions shaped lipstick’s cultural meanings? By examining lipstick’s gendered history, we highlight how lipstick reflects contested feminist politics of choice – regarded as playful and deliberately chosen as well as fostering appearance-based expectations based on idealised feminine beauty. We highlight how lipstick gives rise to tensions between empowerment and oppression across three main themes: self-expression and choice, privilege and choice, and morality and choice. We conclude that for lipstick to be pleasurable and freely chosen, it must first be decoupled from patriarchal standards of ideal feminine beauty for women.
Com a entrada dos Estados Unidos na Segunda Guerra Mundial, o recrutamento de soldados tornou-se indispensável para a participação ativa no caminho da vitória para os Aliados. Contudo, no território norte-americano, com a ida dos homens à guerra, houve, imediatamente, uma escassez de mão-de-obra. Logo, foi percebido que essa lacuna trabalhista poderia ser preenchida pelas mulheres norte-americanas, população remanescente do país no momento. A partir disso, o governo americano iniciou um projeto de iniciativa de adesão das mulheres ao setor industrial, por meio das propagandas. Desse movimento, a iconografia “Rosie, the Riveter” foi o símbolo da inclusão das mulheres no mercado de trabalho, sendo até hoje utilizada para diálogos com esse fim.
Cyclic repetition can be observed in the use of figurative elements in the conceptualization of the coronavirus crisis, involving visual intertextuality or intervisuality. An example is provided by Rosie the Riveter , an iconic image from WW2, which has become extremely popular in recent times. The image in question has undergone a number of changes over time. Initially it was used as a personification thereby becoming a feminist symbol (essentially a stereotype). Then, it continued as a paragon. More recently it has acquired new meanings and functions by dispensing with almost all paragon and stereotype elements. These changes have been driven or supported by metonymies. Some of these metonymies have had an intrinsic or constitutive role, while other have had an extrinsic or recontextualizing role. The effects of the latter can be appreciated in the light of exemplification theory, which we take here to be a special form of discourse framing that heavily relies on metonymy. The metonymic figurativity analyzed in this article is not purely referential. There is added attitudinal value that primarily arises from establishing social rapport, creating empathy, and mobilizing citizens for action, while criticizing certain behaviors.
This article investigates how gender roles shape, normalize, and reinforce militarism and vice versa. Drawing on in-depth interviews with nineteen conscientious objectors, it explores the impacts of militarism on society and offers a picture of women’s demilitarization attempts in Turkey. It applies Cynthia Enloe’s feminist curiosity to understand the link between militarism, gender, and conscientious objection. Recent works have applied Enloe’s feminist curiosity and brought about a feminist approach to critical military studies. Such works, illuminating as they are, have paid little attention to the case of Turkey, the only member of the Council of Europe that does not recognize the right to conscientious objection. Most importantly, current debates on resistance to militarism and the right to conscientious objection are centred on the case of Israel, where women are conscripted. This constitutes a significant lacuna in the literature which this article tries to fill by examining Turkey, where women are not conscripted yet they declare their conscientious objection. The article illustrates that conscription constitutes only one dimension of militarism and that militarism also affects women’s lives even though they are not subjected to compulsory military service. In so doing, it broadens the discussion on the right to conscientious objection by studying those who are previously assumed to be ‘irrelevant’.
Book accompanying the documentary of the same name (1980).
Creating Rosie the Riveter examines advertisements and fiction published in the Saturday Evening Post and True Story in order to show how propaganda was used to encourage women to enter the work force.