Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of the USO Hostesses during World War II by Meghan K. Winchell (review)

Meghan K. Winchell explores volunteer work by hostesses for the American United Service Organizations (USO) as a form of what sociologist Laura Balbo has labeled “emotional labor” and as an example of the obligations of (predominantly white, middle-class) feminine citizenship. To me, and probably to most readers of this journal, this book is most interesting where the author examines how gendered obligation intersected with sexual expression.

In the role of surrogate sweethearts and mothers, junior and senior hostesses provided servicemen with feminine companionship and the comforts of home in USO canteens across the United States during the Second World War. Dressed—at the organization’s behest—in their date-night best, junior hostesses served as soldiers’ dance partners, dinner dates, and losing opponents at cards, checkers, and ping-pong. Senior hostesses, in maternal guise, supplied lonely young men with homemade baked goods, darned socks, and a sympathetic ear.

USO hostesses served not only individual soldiers but also the wartime state by reminding servicemen, in Winchell’s words, “of their humanity and the family and community life for which they were fighting” (23). As stand-ins—but not replacements—for wives and sweethearts, junior hostesses were taught to encourage soldiers to confide in them about the women they loved and left behind. “In doing so,” Winchell writes, the hostesses “put aside their identities to become the mutable ‘every woman’ that bands of servicemen needed at particular times” (88). As informal counselors, senior hostesses sought to ease the stressful transition from civilian to military life by listening to the soldiers’ concerns and providing what assistance and comfort they could. I only wish Winchell had elaborated in more detail and depth why American soldiers were popularly believed to need such reminders of home.

Along with shutting down brothels and punishing women suspected of promiscuity, establishing USO canteens was part of a national effort to preserve military manpower by reducing sexually transmitted diseases. Rather than consorting with “bad girls” in bars, soldiers were urged to spend their free time in the company of charming but chaste junior hostesses. Of course, as the US Army’s posters against venereal diseases warned, a young woman might “look clean” but be infected. A strict screening process, the constant presence of chaperones, and prohibitions against dating ensured that USO hostesses were seldom listed on servicemen’s sexual contact reports. These protective measures served not only soldiers and the state but also junior hostesses who valued their reputation as “good girls” and yet wished to explore some forms of sexual self-expression. Indeed, Winchell argues, club rules “camouflaged” sexual conduct (127).

Junior hostesses were not simply safe sex objects for servicemen. Although taught by the USO to subordinate themselves to the soldiers’ needs—even to the point of tolerating a grabby dance partner so as not to shame him— many young women were motivated to serve by sexual as well as patriotic desires. As Winchell points out, the lack of appropriate civilian partners combined with the romantic allure of the military uniform made young, unmarried women eager to serve as hostesses. Within the club’s confines, they might enjoy jitterbugging with a young officer from Mississippi or spinning-the-bottle with a group of enlisted men from across the country. Furthermore, young women commonly flouted prohibitions against dating men they met at the canteen. Indeed, one former hostess described the no-dating rule as a useful tool. In her words, it was a form of “protection . . . because then we could use that as an excuse . . . if we didn’t want to go out, but if we wanted to go out there were always ways to get out” (120).

This study will be of interest to historians of war and gender as well as historians of sexuality. It is a great companion piece to Marilyn Hegarty’s Victory...