The documentation of America’s war effort through propaganda and advertising stimulated a different fight—an Allied women’s war. The continuation of traditional American life was highly sought after; however, with the need for munitions production, women traded in their archetypal familial duties, without sacrificing their fashion magazines or faces. Expectations for women began to intertwine with the fight for nationalism, cosmetics, and individual prosperities. Wartime campaigns and ad accounts, spearheaded by men, ultimately acknowledged women as profoundly essential militarily as well as economically and socially. The collaboration between the United States government and Madison Avenue agencies revealed the nature of American society in times of both peace and war.
The impact of cosmetics, as suggested by Melissa A. McEuen, author of Making War, Making Women, created complex changes in the positions held by women, in heterosexual relations, as well as the constructs of race. She argues, though, that complexion and skin tone remained the most important to a woman’s overall appearance—“whiteness” as an American ideal of beauty, patriotism, and status was utilized in promotions by the Ad Council, The Crisis, and the Women’s Army Corps. In a global racial struggle, “while tradition and habit worked to keep blacks and whites separate in public transportation, wartime realities blurred the boundaries” (McEuen 32). As many interned Japanese-American women longed to prove their loyalty, Black women recognized the appeal in having lighter skin and were encouraged to gain more independence by joining the workforce. The most significant and individualized facet of the domestic war effort was the responsibility of women to uphold their household obligations. These duties, despite some change during the war years, emphasized the dynamic use of glamour and makeup as “dry ammunition.”
Ad campaigns, like Pond’s Cold Cream, for example, translated societal values onto the glossy pages of fashion magazines, like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar (targeting mainly white middle-class women). This was put into practice over time by moving from a strong female independence saturated with hyperfeminism to focusing on faithful partnership by the end of the war to the danger of makeup and “erotic feminism,” which took shape by the turn of the twentieth century. Beyond the pages of magazines, however, “to encourage enlistment in various military nursing corps, stores were urged to give door prizes…and offer incentives…to early enlistees” (McEuen 45). This strategy worked! Further accentuating the expectation of American feminism, campaigns focused on the woman’s obsession with vanity, which would eventually become an unvirtuous stigma by the time of Germany’s Unconditional Surrender.
Since facial complexion and appearance became the primary concern among women, one might ask—what specific cosmetic really made the difference? Simply, it was lipstick, as investigated by McEuen. At this point, women developed to be the most exploitable consumers for advertisers and propagandists. Although, women did receive a boost in morale, patriotism, maturity, and a touch of glamour and freshness, lipstick did play a noteworthy role in the depiction and production of the war effort, as well as sex appeal. The WAC’s propaganda posters feature the juxtaposition of battle scenes in the background and a white woman soldier’s pretty face in the foreground (McEuen 37). This offers the audience a link between race, patriotism, and the role which women were expected to play. The wartime paradox as considered by The New Yorker’s cartoonist, Alan Dunn—created by men and judged by men—strongly influenced and revolutionized the concepts of conventionality, whether it questioned heterosexuality, personal successes, or duty to country well into postwar world.
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