# Gee!! I Wish I Were a Man, I'd Join the Navy (1917), Christy's recruiting sheet

A 1917 U.S. Navy recruiting poster by Howard Chandler Christy shows a smiling young woman in a Navy jumper and cap saying she would join the Navy if she were a man, over the line "Be a man and do it."

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      Gee!! I Wish I Were a Man, I'd Join the Navy

      Gee!! I Wish I Were a Man, I'd Join the Navy (1917), Christy's recruiting sheet
      Howard Chandler Christy's 1917 Navy recruiting poster puts a young woman in uniform: "Gee!! I wish I were a man, I'd join the Navy. Be a man and do it."

## Techniques named on the archive record

Transfer
      Date1917Made byU.S. Navy recruiting; Howard Chandler Christy (artist)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeWilson AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceLibrary of Congress , retrieved September 27, 2026SourcePublic domain in the U.S. (published before 1931) Christy, Howard Chandler, 1873-1952, artist. 1917. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-40824.
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A 1917 U.S. Navy recruiting poster by Howard Chandler Christy shows a smiling young woman in a Navy jumper and cap saying she would join the Navy if she were a man, over the line "Be a man and do it."

## What the sheet prints

A young woman in a petty officer's jumper and a sailor's cap, smiling straight out of the frame. The type is large and conversational, then turns into an order at the bottom.

GEE!!

I WISH I WERE A MAN

I'd JOIN The NAVY

BE A MAN AND DO IT

UNITED STATES NAVY RECRUITING STATION

Transcription in the FRAME record; Christy's signature under the figure is not transcribed there. Full record at propagandaarchive.org.

## Who issued it

U.S. Navy recruiting, art by Howard Chandler Christy (1873–1952), 1917. The image is the Library of Congress copy, LC-DIG-ppmsca-40824, public domain in the United States as a pre-1931 publication. The record gives no NAID.

## How to read it

The FRAME record names the figure as the Christy Girl, the magazine illustrator's well-known type of the American young woman. The Navy borrowed her popularity and put her in its uniform. Two messages run at once. To men: she admires sailors, so become one. And under it: if a girl wants this and you hold back, what does that make you?

"Be a man and do it" is the hinge. Enlistment, which is a legal act with a term of service, gets recast as proof of manhood. It also sidesteps the questions a volunteer should be able to ask: for how long, where, at what pay, and what happens if he is hurt. Compare the plain request on Flagg's I Want You for U.S. Army, and the anger on his Tell That to the Marines!

There is an irony on the page that the poster did not intend. The same year, a banner outside the White House, carried by Virginia Arnold of the National Woman's Party, said 20,000,000 American women were "not self-governed." The wish in the headline is played as a joke. For the vote, it was not one. The Wilson administration essay separates the wartime pictures that came from other offices, such as the Army's I Want You sheet, from the Committee on Public Information's own work.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Gee!! I Wish I Were a Man, I'd Join the Navy, 1917. U.S. Navy recruiting; artist Howard Chandler Christy.

- Library of Congress, item 2002712088, LC-DIG-ppmsca-40824, retrieved by the archive 27 September 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain in the U.S. (published before 1931).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/gee-i-wish-i-were-a-man-1917/