“Military recruiting posters, especially anything with women, are huge right now,” said Bungalow Blondie Margo Essman at the Del Mar Show. In particular, newer collectors, in their 20s, are snapping up World War I and World War II posters with images of airplanes, female soldiers and nurses, and Uncle Sam. The current war has made people patriotic, according to Essman who priced a mint condition 1944 recruiting poster with five women, “For Your Country’s Sake Today…For Your Own Sake Tomorrow,” at $175. She can be contacted at (858) 487-9463. Another poster encourages women to Speed them Back…Join the WAAC.” ”It was done in 1943, at the point when they were trying really hard to get women to join the military,” said Essman, adding that there were a lot of Rosie the Riveter types that were at home working in factories for the cause, but not that many women were actually joining the fight at the front lines. She priced the image at $130. World War II was not the first war to change the role of women in the United States. With the advent of World War I in 1914, women were suddenly forced to not only earn a living with their husbands off at war, but to work at the armament factories. Women in even greater numbers joined the World War II effort. The next big push towards feminine equality came in 1970 with the publication of “The Female Eunich” by Germaine Greer. In contrast to earlier feminist works, Greer uses humour, boldness and coarse language to present a direct and candid description of female sexuality. Greer argued that men hate women, though the latter do not realize this and are taught to hate themselves. Arguments and fights broke out over dinner tables, and copies of it were thrown across rooms at unsuspecting husbands. Some people feel Greer was a “Janie-come-lately,” and it was really Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique,” published in 1963, that laid the foundation for the movement, which eventually came to full flower in the 1970s. The Feminine Mystique came about after Friedan sent a questionnaire to other women in her 1942 Smith College graduating class. Most women in her class indicated a general unease with their lives. Through her findings, Friedan hypothesized that women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children. Such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family. However, the most famous feminist pioneer was former Playboy bunny Gloria Steinem, founder of Ms. Magazine in July 1972. Her most famous prediction was that Anita Hill, the central figure in a sexual harassment case involving Surpreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, would herself become a Supreme Court Justice. All of those who held their breath waiting for this prediction to come true, have passed on.
