We’re working on a whole new uniform wardrobe, including some things you can wear
right now. A black felt beret, white shirt, gloves and scarf. Smart patent leather, low-
heeled shoes, clutch handbag, and a matching umbrella and raincoat.
So even if Army women are exploring new career territory and performing jobs previously
restricted to men, the Army has ensured that they’ll be wearing feminine clothes. This ad
assumes that while young women are interested in new job opportunities, they might worry that
the Army will diminish their femininity. (And perhaps the Army wants to make sure it attracts
“normal” women who, while interested in career opportunities, are still concerned with their
appearance.)
In the mid-1970s, while the Army still ran ads featuring benefits and new educational
programs, it also began running ads of a different tenor. These ads promote the intangibles of
service, as well as the tangible advantages. The Army appears as a place to serve, be challenged,
and prove oneself. These ads more explicitly promote masculinity, with their references to
physical challenges, courage, and ruggedness, and, unlike the ads promoting benefits, they only
show men (with the exception of what appears to be a mother at her son’s graduation from Basic
Training). Most show men in uniform, performing some task or in an active role.
The late 1970s was a period of tumult for the Army. Entry-level military pay began to
lag behind civilian pay, and in 1976, the GI bill (an educational benefit) ended. The military had
trouble meeting its recruiting goals, and the quality of male recruits became a concern (Segal,
1989: 39). At the same time, women’s participation was expanding rapidly, with their numbers
rising and their job opportunities increasing. Congress opened the service academies to women
in 1976, and in 1978 the Women’s Army Corp was dissolved as a unit separate from the rest of
the Army. Over the next two decades, the expansion in women’s participation was accompanied
by backlash, attempts to roll back women’s participation, and political controversy.
After the recruiting failures of the “hollow Army” of the late 1970s, the Army developed
a research program on the attitudes of young Americans, involving N.W. Ayer, the Army’s
advertising agency, the Rand Corporation, the Department of Defense’s Youth Attitudinal
Tracking Survey, the Army Research Institute, and the Military Academy at West Point
(Thurman, 1996: 60). In 1981, the Army switched its slogan from “Join the People Who’ve
Joined the Army” to “Be All You Can Be.” The Army introduced the slogan in a slick TV
commercial, which begins by showing a young, white, blond, man, in the final stages of putting
on his dress uniform, as he talks about his pride and satisfaction in a voice-over. Then the voice
of an announcer asks if the listener is “interested in wearing this uniform?” and explains some of
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Convention