Christian Science Monitor article on the recruitment of women into the military in the wake of
sexual harassment scandals reported that the Navy’s recruitment of women was down, not
because women were reluctant to join up, but because large numbers of women were choosing to
stay in the service, and the Navy had limited spaces on its ships open to women. According to a
lieutenant in the Navy Recruiting Command, “We have many, many more women wanting to
come into the Navy than we have billets to fill” (quoted in Marks, 1997:3). While in theory
many more positions were open to women, the Navy was not rushing to make space for them on
ships.
The recruiting problems of the late 1990s affected the Navy as well as the Army. In an
attempt to reverse the trend, the Navy, using the slogan “Let the Journey Begin,” introduced a
new campaign that focused on the lives of individual sailors. Each of the print ads pictures a
sailor, alone or in a group of other sailors, and charts his—or in one ad in my sample, her—Navy
journey. A short timeline lists the sailor’s achievements and the age at which each was
accomplished. The one ad from this series in my sample that features a woman pictures a
smiling woman in a flight suit, Lieutenant Commander Loree “Rowdy” Hirschmann, flanked by
a man and woman in jumpsuits with a plane in the background. Her journey includes, after Navy
ROTC and a BA in Mathematics, “attends Navy flight school to become a pilot,” “lands on
aircraft carrier for the first time,” “marries fellow Navy pilot,” and “debating whether to use GI
bill to finance film school or Harvard Business School.” Hirschmann is one of the few women to
join the elite group of naval aviators—the Top Gun, Tailhook guys. She is considering post-
Navy careers with some prestige (film school has cultural cachet while Harvard Business School
promises corporate success), but with no direct connection to flying, technology, the military, or
her naval training. Hers is the only journey that mentions marriage, asserting her femininity,
heterosexuality, and desirability (she has landed a naval aviator).
The print ads were part of a $20 million campaign developed by the advertising agency
BBDO that also included television ads directed by filmmaker Spike Lee (Dill, 1999). The five
commercials highlight different aspects of Navy life: in “Travel,” sailors discuss the exotic ports
of call to which the Navy has taken them; in “Homecoming,” a young Hispanic man at a
welcome-home party is the subject of proud attention from his family and respect and admiration
from younger party-goers; in “SEALs” four men discuss the challenges of being a SEAL while
the camera shows them in dramatic action; “Education” presents a group of young men and
women who have been given the opportunity to go to college, courtesy of the Navy; and in
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Convention