The Poster That Was Too "Sexy"

Ah, life was so much simpler then...
"This is the glamorous woman who was the face behind one of the most controversial recruitment posters of the Second World War.
Map room assistant Doreen Murphy was sketched by artist Abram Games for the women's ATS poster that had to later be withdrawn because it was 'too sexy'.
In an effort to get younger women to join the Auxiliary Territorial Army, Games glamorised the role.
He deliberately glamourised the role by turning brunette Doreen into a blonde, gave her red lipstick and put her cap at a 'sexy' angle.
But his 'blonde bombshell' poster triggered complaints, not least from Conservative MP and feminist Thelma Cazalet-Kier.
After an outburst in the House of Commons the 10,000 copies of the posters were ordered to be torn down from recruitment offices and public buildings.
The vast majority of them were pulped but it is known that a handful of them survive today.
One of those has now emerged for sale at auction for £5,000 having been in a private collection for more than 30 years.
It is in overall good condition, although its four corners are ripped from where it was torn down from the wall of the ATS recruitment office in Colchester, Essex, in 1941.
Patrick Bogue, of Onslows Auctioneers of Blandford, Dorset, has been in contact with Games' daughter, Naomi, who has been able to confirm it was Doreen Murphy who turned her late father's head."
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7236223/Bombshell-WWII-recruitment-poster-hammer.html

 

Corr! Whollop!

Seriously too sexy!? A face and a neck?
What would they say about the ladies adorning the sides of B-17s and 24s in England?
Times have changed indeed...

 

Yeah, those were the days, and a WOMAN complained. Typical.

 

It wasn't because too sexy:

Abram Games' 1941 poster of an ATS recruit in profile wearing the new uniform, was nicknamed "the blonde bombshell" and was withdrawn after protests in parliament that it would encourage women to join up for the wrong reasons (that is, to pick up men).
You Weren't Taught that with the Welding: lessons in sexuality in the Second World War by PENNY SUMMERFIELD & NICOLE CROCKETT

 

Link doesn't work.

 

Probably cause a fit of the vapours.

 

Our own Carolyn "Clem" Cloyd would be the perfect visage to adorn a recruitment poster. That garrison cap photo is a marvel!!!