UNKNOWN ARTIST

Be A Marine (U.S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve), 1943

Lithograph on paper

Found in Collection, 1943.73

World War II was a complicated time for women and their societal standing, as this poster demonstrates. With record numbers of women entering the workforce, the notion that women’s labor should be strictly confined to the home was challenged. Not only was it more acceptable for women to work outside the home, they were recruited with propaganda posters like this one.

The complexity of this piece is highlighted with the main phrase “Be A Marine…Free a Marine to fight.” Women serving in the military was very new at this time, and now they had their own division. The contribution of women in the Marines is immense and they worked in a variety of positions, from the unsurprising stereotypical role of cooks, to jobs like aerial gunnery instructors and cryptographers. While this was an advancement for women at the time, gender roles were still very much in place as the poster reminds us with the slogan that still places women in a role meant to serve men. The woman on the poster is clearly separated from the men in the background, with the implication that if women were to take up non-combat positions more men would be available to go to the front. In this case, women’s labor outside the home is expressly what the poster is asking for, yet it is still not free from gender norms and restrictions.

—Jenny Varner