All of them make references to advanced technology, and they link the training in technology to
future civilian careers. In addition, the campaign also frequently mentions educational benefits
and intangibles like challenge, responsibility, and growth. Most of these ads show men
performing a task. One features a woman sitting at a control panel, though a man leans over her,
turning a knob, as if he is supervising or instructing her. The ad also has a small photo of two
men and two women in civilian clothes with bicycles; here, again, women are used to represent
leisure.
The early 1990s brought both the Tailhook scandal and changes in the law restricting
women’s shipboard service. The 1991 annual convention of the Tailhook Association of naval
aviators led to public revelations of debauchery and accusations of the mistreatment of women,
including the groping and abuse of female naval officers in attendance. In 1993, Secretary of
Defense Les Aspin ordered the Navy to draft legislation to repeal the exclusion of women from
combat ships, and Congress approved the changes (Women’s Research and Education Institute,
2003). From that point on, women could theoretically be assigned to any Navy billet other than
SEALs, (because of remaining combat exclusions) and submarine duty (based not on any combat
restrictions but on the difficulty of accommodating both male and female submariners in the
limited physical space of a submarine). Each of these was a major event for the Navy, and each
in its own way challenged constructions of masculinity within the Navy. The opening of combat
ships to women, which was fiercely resisted by much of the naval community, threatened the
masculinizing function of service on a Navy ship, which stretched back to the days of
romanticization of the man o’warsman. Tailhook exposed the Navy’s tacit encouragement, in
relation to naval aviators, of a brand of masculinity that includes risk-taking behavior, sexual
aggressiveness, and hard drinking. (While the Navy gave extensive support to Top Gun, the
1986 Paramount Studios movie about naval aviators, they withdrew support for a planned sequel,
because Tailhook “made the drinking and womanizing in Top Gun no longer something the navy
wanted to brag about” [Robb, 2004:182].)
Neither Tailhook nor the opening of roles to women seems to have had much effect on
the recruiting materials of the period. The ads revisit themes that have appeared before in Navy
ads, which seem to alternate between an emphasis on high-tech career skills and an emphasis on
the adventure and challenges of life at sea, in both cases aiming the appeal visually and textually
at young men. Despite the new roles for women and the risk that Tailhook may have
discouraged women from enlisting, the ads don’t reflect an attempt to appeal to women. A 1997
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Convention