Amanda H. Littauer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469623788
- eISBN:
- 9781469625195
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469623788.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter examines the lives of the “victory girls” of World War II—young women who exhibited patriotism by offering sex to servicemen. This relationship defied not only social norms but also the ...
More
This chapter examines the lives of the “victory girls” of World War II—young women who exhibited patriotism by offering sex to servicemen. This relationship defied not only social norms but also the authorities that attempted to classify, manage, and restrain young people's sexual acts and attitudes. World War II left a legacy of young female sexual self-assertion that would generate both conservative and liberal responses in the postwar years, inspiring calls for female sexual autonomy during the “sexual revolution” to come. The stories examined in the chapter illustrate how the nation's military mobilization expanded young women's access to casual encounters. It also discusses the issues that emerged such as infidelity, rape, and the rise of sexually transmitted diseases.Less
This chapter examines the lives of the “victory girls” of World War II—young women who exhibited patriotism by offering sex to servicemen. This relationship defied not only social norms but also the authorities that attempted to classify, manage, and restrain young people's sexual acts and attitudes. World War II left a legacy of young female sexual self-assertion that would generate both conservative and liberal responses in the postwar years, inspiring calls for female sexual autonomy during the “sexual revolution” to come. The stories examined in the chapter illustrate how the nation's military mobilization expanded young women's access to casual encounters. It also discusses the issues that emerged such as infidelity, rape, and the rise of sexually transmitted diseases.
Amanda H. Littauer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469623788
- eISBN:
- 9781469625195
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469623788.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This book looks at mid-century American sex and culture. It traces the origins of the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. The book argues that sexual liberation was much more than a reaction to 1950s ...
More
This book looks at mid-century American sex and culture. It traces the origins of the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. The book argues that sexual liberation was much more than a reaction to 1950s repression because it largely involved the mainstreaming of a counterculture already on the rise among girls and young women decades earlier. From World War II-era “victory girls” to teen lesbians in the 1940s and 1950s, these nonconforming women and girls navigated and resisted intense social and interpersonal pressures to fit existing mores, using the upheavals of the era to pursue new sexual freedoms. Building on a new generation of research on postwar society, the text tells the history of diverse young women who stood at the center of major cultural change and helped transform a society bound by conservative sexual morality into one more open to individualism, plurality, and pleasure in modern sexual life.Less
This book looks at mid-century American sex and culture. It traces the origins of the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. The book argues that sexual liberation was much more than a reaction to 1950s repression because it largely involved the mainstreaming of a counterculture already on the rise among girls and young women decades earlier. From World War II-era “victory girls” to teen lesbians in the 1940s and 1950s, these nonconforming women and girls navigated and resisted intense social and interpersonal pressures to fit existing mores, using the upheavals of the era to pursue new sexual freedoms. Building on a new generation of research on postwar society, the text tells the history of diverse young women who stood at the center of major cultural change and helped transform a society bound by conservative sexual morality into one more open to individualism, plurality, and pleasure in modern sexual life.
