According to a History Channel Documentary I've been watching, women who dated servicemen in the US during WWII toted a double-edged sword. On one hand there was the view they were performing a patriotic service by entertaining and comforting the troops on leave. On the other, they were looked down upon as improper women of low moral character and disparagingly dubbed (not Dub-Dubbed
)
victory girls or even, more disparagingly,
patriotutes. I searched everywhere for these terms with no luck. (Dr. Bill?) They also said that in Spring of 1941 the moral prudes and religious fundamentalists gathered forces (surprise, surprise, nothing new) and managed to get
The May Act passed which effectively outlawed prostitution in the US under the guise that it was feared it would spread veneral disease among the troops and render them incapable of fighting. I searched for
The May Act and not one hit...strange. They then went on to say how J. Edgar Hoover received and then issued a memo immediately upon passage of the act that enabled government agents to monitor the lives of "suspect women". High among these suspect women where waitresses, a job considered beneath proper ladies, that "no good woman would have"...and there were actually sweeps where waitresses were rounded up, thousands suffered this fate, and they were accused of prostitution, incarcerated, and tested for syphilis
just because they were waitresses!...there was a mention of one such sweep of 25 women in Alabama, and another of hundreds of women in Texas. (my, my, the things the history books omit for us).
Anyone familiar with
victory girl/patriotute or
The May Act? Or these waitress sweeps? (waitress sweeps...what a ridiculous notion, huh?)
Much of the material for this documentary was drawn from this woman's work:
Marilyn Hegarty,
"Patriots, Prostitutes, Patriotutes: The Mobilization and Control of Female Sexuality in the U.S. during World War II," 1998. Hegarty has already published an article based on her M.A. thesis, and a revised version of her dissertation is under consideration at the University of California Press. She is a Senior Lecturer at Ohio State.
