This shouty recruitment ad was created by illustrator Howard Chandler Christy in 1917. The text of the poster is supposedly a real quote from a woman named Bernice Smith, whom Christy overheard outside a recruiting office.
My love for this poster was so immediate and visceral it never occurred to me that other people would find it weird. Most of my apartment-visitors don't ask about it, but those who have over the years are pretty much unanimously confused (e.g., "So... you really like the Navy?" or most recently, "Why is there a poster saying BE A MAN AND DO IT hanging over your toilet?").
Again, I find the poster so obviously wonderful that the flummoxed reactions always take me by surprise. I've never had a good response. I usually default to, "I think it's funny," which is accurate in a broad, hand-wavy sense. (Funny doesn't just mean humorous, but also peculiar, odd, off-putting, intriguing. Surely my feelings fall somewhere under that expansive umbrella?) I'll also mention semi-apologetically that World War I and gender/feminism are two of my biggest pet interests, so...?
But I can do better than that:
Take another look at Christy's ad, using your snootiest media criticism googles. Obviously the point of the poster (the text) is "Yo, menfolk, join the Navy," but how would you break down the emotional appeal being made (the subtext)? The poster is clearly drawing on the audience's feelings about masculinity/femininity to make its argument ("I wish I were a man"; "BE A MAN AND DO IT"), but in what way? Does it succeed?
It's worth remembering that recruitment posters, especially circa WWI, were typically pretty rigid when it came to gender roles: consider "Women of Britain say GO!" or "Women-Folk Worth Defending" or "Destroy this Mad Brute" or "Fall In." The visual messaging in those posters is not subtle (superliminal, if you will) and strikingly consistent. Men are strong-jawed heroes in uniform who protect the homeland; women are the imperiled assets in need of protection. Masculinity becomes synonymous with military service: enlisting means you're a man, while failing to enlist means you're a sexually insufficient sissy -- womanish, even. Bleh!
A through-line here is that men and women are supposed to want completely different things for themselves. Men want to shoot guns and ride horses and make theirs but to do and die. Women want to hang back and devote themselves to caretaking and supporting and rationing. Never the twain shall meet.
Back to Christy's poster. Let's parse the subtext of its most prominent features:
"Gee!! I wish I were a man, I'd join the Navy": This attractive woman wants to be a sailor. Being a sailor is something pretty ladies want to do.That's... something.
"BE A MAN AND DO IT": To be a man, you need to be like this pretty lady, or at least follow her example. Manhood means stepping up to carry out the tasks that women can't accomplish themselves.
Lady in sailor's uniform: This well-known symbol of masculinity -- the thing that separates the manly fighter from those yellow-bellied civilian wimps -- is represented here in an androgynously sexy way reminiscent of drag. She's intentionally alluring, but also, the graphic positioning of the text encourages you to imagine this woman as "A MAN."
What I love about this poster is that, while you intuitively understand the message Christy was trying to send ("Men: join the Navy because women think it's sexy and also it's the manly thing to do"), the whole thing is actually a hot mess. Every aspect of it unintentionally contradicts or warps the gender stereotypes it's trying to exploit. It's a gloriously weird distillation of mixed gender messaging and confused sexuality.
If you're still puzzled about why having that image around brings me joy, I can't do much else other than shrug. If you're ever at my apartment and ask about the poster, I'll tell you the truth: I think it's funny.
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