Looking into the United States in World War II and specifically the representations of women in the propaganda
http://oberlinlibstaff.com/omeka_hist244/exhibits/show/homefront/propaganda

Although the war crisis led to new realms of autonomy for women on the home front, women also became targets of propaganda that emphasized women’s sexual and domestic roles in ways that limited their sense of agency during the war years. Through different and, often, contradictory avenues of propaganda women were presented as victims, domestic beings, and as threats. Wartime propaganda portrayed women as sexually vulnerable victims in danger of the hyper-sexual desires of the enemy. This cannot however be said the same for all women in propaganda as in some cases they were shown as strong or taking on man’s roles such as Rosie the Riveter.

The examples below show and discuss the representations of women I feel should be questioned and are wrong and it all shows how women were used as an object in the wartime propaganda.

Women Seen As Domestic Figures:

More so than at any previous time in the US history women were breaking out of their traditional gendered roles by participating in the labour force, join the military, wartime propaganda helped to limit them to the classic roles of mothers, faithful girlfriends who contributed to the war effort solely through domestic means.

Unlike the infamous ‘Rosie the Riveter’ posters generated during the war, much of propaganda posters became tools to emphasize the significance of women’s war effort in the domestic realm. The trope of the mother-daughter duo illustrated in posters such as ‘Even a little can help a lot -NOW’ and ‘We’ll  have lots to eat this winter, won’t we Mother?” emphasize the significance of women both as domestic beings canning foods and pasting stamps and as mothers reproducing children who will become assets to society. This branch of propaganda maintains traditional femininity and domesticity, thus suggesting that when men return home from the war they will be returning to a normal life where women raise children and tend to the house while men earn money.

Women as Victims:

One way in which women’s sexual and domestic roles became defined by propaganda was through propaganda designed to encourage enlistment and the purchase of war bonds by depicting the outcome on the home-front if the US were to lose. The main theme that the propaganda campaign chose to focus on was the effects of the war on women. The majority of this propaganda portrayed women in one of two ways. First, and more frequently, women were depicted as young, innocent victims of sexual violence inflicted by hyper-sexual enemy soldiers. The other way in which women were illustrated was as helpless mothers clinging to their children as enemy violence threatens to annihilate them and their homes. Both of these depictions reduce women’s agency as passive participants in the war effort and illustrate them solely as vulnerable victims of enemy violence.      

Not only does the war bonds campaign provoke fears about mother and, thus, family vulnerability in the face of the enemy, but it also emphasizes the susceptibility of young American women to the hypersexual desires of enemy men. Once again, the narrative of American men needing to defend and preserve the honor and morality of American women is used to benefit the war effort.

Women As A Threat:

In contrast to posters of women as the weak, vulnerable victims of sexual desires, an entire campaign designed to fight venereal diseases (VD’s) recast women’s sexuality as a threat to soldiers the nuclear family, and, thus, the nation. This poster campaign often illustrated women as “bad girls”—dangerous and “loose,” in contrast with other campaigns depicting the “good girl” image of smiley mothers and housewives. The venereal disease propaganda is particularly gendered both in who appears on posters and who the targeted audience is.

The fact that women are demonized based on their sexual behaviors illustrates the larger societal need to control women’s morality and sexuality. Instead of being liberating, women gaining more autonomy over their bodies became a threat to the fundamental values of the American nuclear family. Women who were sexually active did not fulfill their traditional gender role and became outcasts who were looked down upon for having ‘loose’ morality.

Guerrilla Girls

Tate Website Article about the Guerrilla Girls

Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within the greater arts community. The group employs culture jamming in the form of posters, books, billboards and public appearances to expose discrimination and corruption. To remain anonymous, member don gorilla masks and use pseudonyms that refer to deceased female artists. According to GG1 identities are concealed because issues matter more than individual identities.

Many feminist artists in the 1970’s dared to imagine that female artists could produce authentically and radically different art, undoing the prevailing visual paradigm. Shaped by the 1970’s women’s movement, the Guerrilla Girls resolved to devise new strategies. Most noticeably, they realized that 1970s-era tools such as pickets and marches proved ineffective.

Throughout their existence, the Guerrilla Girls have gained the most attention for their bold protest art. Their projects (mostly posters at first) express observations, concerns, and ideals regarding numerous social topics. Their art has always been fact-driven and informed by the group’s unique approach to data collection.

The Guerrilla Girls are drawing attention to and trying to rid of sexism as well as racism, I can relate what the Guerrilla girls do and their message to my work by looking at the links that I am aiming to show the changes or the no changes in the way women are portrayed and put forward in some of the era’s where the male gaze was very prominent.

I can also relate the Guerrilla Girls to the ideas of Cindy Sherman as her photography aims to force the audience to reconsider common stereotypes and cultural assumptions, among the latter political sarire, caricature, the graphic novel, pulp fiction, stand-up comedy (some of her characters are indeed uncomfortably “funny”).

Both the Guerrilla Girls and Cindy Sherman show that they are against the objectification of women and the idea of the male gaze. I feel I can gain inspiration and ideas from them as I look to move the project forward and look more closely at the time periods I am recreating the adverts from to understand where women stood at that time to then reflect on how they are being presented in those ads.

Manet’s Olympia and it’s Impact

One of the figures who Inaugurated modernism to the history of the art is the renowned French Painter Édouard Manet. As one of his most celebrated paintings Olympia shook the society and made a huge impact on the upcoming generations of artists. The highly controversial composition was painted in 1853 and exposed to the public 2 years later. It represents a nude woman in a leisure pose with a servant bringing flowers. The daring look of a shameless woman caused quite a stir and the public considered the painting indecent since it displayed a sex worker in her boudoir. In relation with that is the fact that the very name Olympia was associated with sex workers in 1860’s Paris.

Manet’s Olympia has been used during the 1970’s as an important reference in the context of the male gaze proposed by the feminist movement. Especially the Black feminists argued that Manet did not include the figure of the maid for the artistic convention, but to create an ideological binary between black and white, good and bad, clean and dirty.