tasks, from working in the control room of a submarine, to welding, to directing a helicopter
landing. Women sailors, on the other hand, are generally not pictured working, on the deck of a
ship, or with equipment. Women sailors, like the women pictured in civilian clothes, usually
appear in pictures that represent travel or leisure; they are shown outdoors, often in a foreign or
exotic setting, like a pigeon-filled European plaza, or near London Bridge, or on a shoreline with
ancient ruins. Women, in a sense then, aren’t being shown as true sailors; even when visually
present in naval uniforms, they aren’t acting like sailors. The images of them as companions to
men and at leisure implicitly feminizes them and distances them from the Navy’s military
functions and operations. Also, while African-American men are pictured frequently in Navy
print ads, the few women who are shown are mostly white. This may be because to the larger
(white) culture, a white woman more generically represents “women,” and she is seen as more
feminine and thus as more appealing and non-threatening. If white women better represent
femininity, the implication of their almost-exclusive presence is that women in the Navy retain
their femininity.
The Navy admits that until the early 1990s, it made no serious effort to recruit women
into the AVF, because its use of women was so limited. At a 1993 conference at the US Naval
Academy to commemorate two decades of the All-Volunteer Force, Rear Admiral Marsha
Johnson Evans, who had served as Commander of the US Navy Recruiting Command explained:
What do we know about recruiting women? Frankly, precious little—except that as
long as we have needed only a few women in traditional roles, we did not have to
prospect. It did not take 31 calls to recruit someone—she walked into the recruiting
station ready to sign. And because female demand to join was greater than the number
needed, the standards for women could be higher than for men—non high-school
graduates and those with Armed Forces Qualification Test scores in lower categories
need not apply.
About a year ago [1992], in anticipation of the expansion of opportunities and in
concert with the Navy’s desire to begin placing more women in nontraditional career
paths, we began an effort to test the market. One year ago, the Navy had no experience
in working the female market and no money to undertake research on it. […] no
advertising money had been spent to create market awareness of opportunities open to
women. (Evans, 1996:267)
The Navy began the 1990s with a new advertising slogan, “You and the Navy, Full Speed
Ahead,” that both emphasized forward motion and progress and harkened back to the famed
exclamation of Admiral David Farragut during the Civil War battle of Mobile Bay, “damn the
torpedoes, full speed ahead.” These ads carry over many of the themes from previous series.
21
Convention