“Band,” a group of Hispanic and African-American men describe the high-tech jobs they
perform on board the ship and the instruments they play in the blues band that they’ve formed
together in their free time. Interestingly, women in the TV ads are connected with travel and
with educational benefits, rather than with shipboard life or Navy jobs.
In its next incarnation, Navy advertising shifted away from an emphasis on benefits and
career, back toward adventure and challenge—this time with a distinctly martial tenor and a
return to a more exclusively male portrayal of Navy life. Around the same time that the Army
attempted to revitalize its image with the “Army of One” campaign, the Navy also made major
changes in how it presented itself, with a sleek, sharp-edged new campaign. Early in 2001, the
Navy adopted the slogan “Accelerate Your Life,” rolled out new advertising, and revamped its
website.
A television commercial which ran on the hit show “Survivor: Outback” in the Spring of
2001 typifies the new campaign. As throbbing rock music by the group Godsmack thunders in
the background, the viewer sees a quickly-shifting series of images, including a face in
camouflage make-up, a small craft skimming over the ocean’s surface and up into the back of a
helicopter, a man with a rifle seen through a night-vision scope, men dropping out of a helicopter
into water, and men with rifles dropping over the side of a small boat into water. The imagery is
all distinctly martial, the action is fast, and the players are all men. While women continue to be
a presence on the Navy’s website, they are not a part of the most recent major print and TV
advertising campaigns that project an idea of the Navy to the general public. Those women who
feel drawn to the Navy on their own are, to a certain degree, welcome, but the Navy continues to
make little effort to appeal to women as potential recruits.
AIR FORCE
The Air Force has had the most complex relationship with women of any of the services.
The Air Force faces the fewest legal restrictions on women’s participation, and from its inception
as an independent service after World War II, women were integrated into its organizational
structures. However, while the Air Force was in the best position of any of the services to utilize
women, it had the least incentive to recruit them, because the Air Force could always attract the
highest quality male recruits. The other services all had higher standards for women recruits than
for men, and could therefore make a choice between recruiting higher-quality women or lower-
quality men, but the Air Force could attract enough men to hold them to higher standards as well.
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Convention