Uniform Matters: Fashion Design in World War II Women's Recruitment

Abstract

They were showing the audience that we had gotten together. They were showing how the women in the Navy were still women. And ladies. The whole thing was to let society know that our girls were their girls. . . They were daughters and sisters. Dorothy Turnbull (Stewart), World War II WAVERecruiter 1 Tailor-made. Ladylike. Gorgeous. These terms echo through the oral histories of women who served in the Navy and Coast Guard during World War II. The women are talking about the uniform they wore while in the service. It was couture-designed, in contrast to uniforms for the other women's service branches.Fashion theorists note that uniforms are classic examples of authority in clothing, with connotations of power conferred upon the wearer (Vining and Hacker; Fussell). Couture style, far from frivolous, gives women substance, allowing them to construct a uniform identity while at the same time expressing their difference from other women. Even before the first training class for women began during World War II, military brass in the Navy and Coast Guard were discussing the uniform the women would eventually wear. There were high expectations. The uniform would, after all, become the public face of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and SPARs (from the Coast Guard motto Semper Paratus, Always Ready), communi-cating both the image and the identity of the female volunteers. It would also become the focal point of the Navy's public relations campaigns, seen in posters, photographs, and film. To understand the meaning of military service for the more than 100,000 women enlistees in the two service branches, it is necessary to understand the powerful image presented by the uniform, and what that uniform meant to volunteers.The Navy and Coast Guard 2 could not draft women during wartime; they were forced to rely on the willingness of women to volunteer for the service branches, which were separate units within each branch of the military. By looking at how the military used the uniform as part of a larger identity campaign to entice women, one can also explore how-or if-the recruits embraced that same identity during their military careers. Through oral history interviews and textual analysis of the uniform itself, I explore how Navy and Coast Guard recruits remember the uniform and use it within their storytelling to reinforce their wartime identities. Fifty-two women from across the United States were interviewed for this project; the interviews were supplemented with archival oral history interviews of officers with the WAVES and SPARs. Multiple uniforms were also examined, held in both archival (Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Kathleen M. Ryan, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the College of Media, Communication, and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is an active documentary filmmaker and her research interests include visual communication, oral history, and how cultural practices inform identity.