Crew Quarters

Cartoon shows a WAVE complaining to her officer about a sailor

who tried to “wrestle” with her. Here the cartoon portrays sexually harassing

women as regular behavior that women in the service should expect.

Cartoon depicts a stranded sailor with a half-naked women

who he has bound and gagged. This published cartoon

in the span of a single frame conveys a joke about the kidnapping

and likely raping of a woman. Such imagery, highlights how Navy

culture was hyper-masculine and fostered sexism.

Cartoon showing a woman pinned up to a wall by her

underwear as a captain yells at a sailor. The cartoon

is suggesting that the officer is not upset with the sailor

kidnapping a women for his sexual desires but only that

he broke the ship’s rule that there be nothing pinned up on the walls.

The cartoons illustrate the sexualization of women by sailors during the 1950s. These images convey a worldview in which sailors were simply unable to control themselves around beautiful women and as such it was expected that women would distract them from their work.

Furthermore, the cartoons emphasize that it was the women’s fault for distracting the sailors since it was the women who dressed provocatively. These cartoons illustrate a worldview that women were there only to provide sexual gratification to the sailors, even if the women served in the Navy in their own right.

These cartoons highlight a culture of viewing women as objects that effected the entire institution of the Navy. The cartoons emphasize a culture that accepted sexual assault against women.

The cartoons highlight the hyper-masculinity of the Navy that accepts jokes expressing sailor' sexual fantasies. When viewed with the cartoons portraying sexual harassment, all of these cartoons dealing with women reveal a culture that was institutionalized and perpetuated through sailors’ portrayal of women.