The Girls Next Door: Bringing the Home Front to the Front Lines

In this engaging scholarly work, history professor Vuic (Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War) examines women’s roles in “military entertainment” from WWI to the 1990s. She argues that women “played a central part in national efforts to construct wartime gender roles, maintain an effective fighting force, mobilize home front support, render the military and its work palatable to the American public, and manage the American military presence in foreign countries.” During the two world wars, the YMCA, Salvation Army, Red Cross, and USO coordinated with the armed services and recruited attractive, educated women to serve coffee and doughnuts, to play board games, and to dance with soldiers. The Army’s Special Services dominated these programs during the Cold War and the Vietnam War, and as more women joined the all-volunteer force in the 1980s, the emphasis shifted from entertainment for single soldiers deployed overseas to morale and social support programs that also served military families. Particularly intriguing are the ways some female entertainment workers undermined the military’s attempts to uphold the sexual and gender norms of the times in various ways, including insisting on their fitness for “men’s work,” lobbying for gender-neutral job titles, and performing in risqué costumes. Deeply researched and highly informative, Vuic’s book will be savored by those interested in women’s history and in the history of the modern military. Illus. (Feb.)