The "Varga Girl" Goes to War
Notes
1. Molly Haskell From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1974).
2. Joanne Meyerowitz "Women, Cheesecake, and Borderline Material: Responses to Girlie Pictures in the Mid-Twentieth-Century U.S." Journal of Women’s History Vol. 8 No. 3 (Fall 1996): 9-35.
3. War Guide Supplement for Confession Magazines September 11, 1942, entry 345, box 1700. Record Group 208, National Records Center. All subsequent references to these archives will from this record group unless otherwise indicated.
4. "The Womanpower Question," War Guide Supplement for Confession Magazines, October 30, 1942, entry 345, box 1700.
5. Leisa Meyer Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women’s Army Corps During World War II (NY: Columbia U. Press 1996), pp. 68-70.
6. Frank Bunce "Three-Day Pass" Saturday Evening Post, April 8, 1944.
7. Saturday Evening Post, April 3, 1943, p. 79.
8. Saturday Evening Post, June 10, 1944, p. 101.
10. "Our Girls in Uniform," Ladies Homes Journal (January 1943): 63. This article is cited in Meyer, as is the War Department slogan.
11. Saturday Evening Post, May 6, 1944, p.99.
12. Tom Robotham Varga (San Diego: Thunder Bay Press 1994).
13. I describe these meetings in Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda During World War II (Amherst: U. of Massachusetts Press 1984).
14. "A National Study of Public Opinion Toward the WAC," Young and Rubicam file, Spring 1944, Box 188, Record Group 165.
15. Susan Hartmann discusses these concerns in "Prescriptions for Penelope: Literature on Women’s Obligations to Returning World War II Veterans," Women’s Studies Vol. 5 No. 3 (1978): 223-39.
16. War Guide Supplement for Confession Magazines, October 30, 1942 entry 345, box 1700. "Resistance to Taking War Jobs in Three New England Cities," Special Memorandum No. 62, June 24, 1943, Special Services Bureau, entry 118, box 706.
17. Phyllis Duganne, "When the Boys Come Home," Saturday Evening Post July 17, 1943.
18. Office of Emergency Management memo September 4, 1943, Records of the Program Manager for the Recruitment of Women, entry 90, box 588.
19. "WAVES Wanted," Records of the Program Manager for the Recruitment of Women, Womanpower file, entry 90, box 588.
20. Robert Westbrook "‘I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Harry James’: American Women and the Problem of Political Obligation in World War II" American Quarterly Vol. 42, No. 4 (December 1990): 587-614.
21. Allan Berube Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (NY: Free Press 1990); Lillian Faderman Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (NY: Columbia U. Press 1991); John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (NY: Harper & Row 1988).
22. Westbrook, "Harry James," 1990.
23. Kenon Breazeale "In Spite of Women: Esquire Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer" Signs vol. 20 No. 1 (Autumn 1994): 1-22.
24. Saturday Evening Post, February 26, 1944, p.33.
25. Saturday Evening Post, October 30, 1943, p. 67.
28. Maureen Honey Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II (Columbia: U. of Missouri Press 1999).
29. Saturday Evening Post, June 26, 1943, p.77.
30. Saturday Evening Post, April 15, 1944, p. 103.
31. For literature on images of empowered women in the 1950's see Joanne Meyerowitz ed. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (philadelphia: Temple University Press 1994); Susan Lynn Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press 1996); Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (NY: Oxford Univ. Press 1987).
