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Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses during World War II
Throughout World War II, when Saturday nights came around, servicemen and hostesses happily forgot the war for a little while as they danced together in USO clubs, which served as havens of stability in a time of social, moral, and geographic upheaval. Meghan Winchell demonstrates that in addition to boosting soldier morale, the USO acted as an architect of the gender roles and sexual codes that shaped the "greatest generation."
Combining archival research with extensive firsthand accounts from among the hundreds of thousands of female USO volunteers, Winchell shows how the organization both reflected and shaped 1940s American society at large. The USO had hoped that respectable feminine companionship would limit venereal disease rates in the military. To that end, Winchell explains, USO recruitment practices characterized white middle-class women as sexually respectable, thus implying that the sexual behavior of working-class women and women of color was suspicious. In response, women of color sought to redefine the USO's definition of beauty and respectability, challenging the USO's vision of a home front that was free of racial, gender, and sexual conflict.
Despite clashes over class and racial ideologies of sex and respectability, Winchell finds that most hostesses benefited from the USO's chaste image. In exploring the USO's treatment of female volunteers, Winchell not only brings the hostesses' stories to light but also supplies a crucial missing piece for understanding the complex ways in which the war both destabilized and restored certain versions of social order.
Combining archival research with extensive firsthand accounts from among the hundreds of thousands of female USO volunteers, Winchell shows how the organization both reflected and shaped 1940s American society at large. The USO had hoped that respectable feminine companionship would limit venereal disease rates in the military. To that end, Winchell explains, USO recruitment practices characterized white middle-class women as sexually respectable, thus implying that the sexual behavior of working-class women and women of color was suspicious. In response, women of color sought to redefine the USO's definition of beauty and respectability, challenging the USO's vision of a home front that was free of racial, gender, and sexual conflict.
Despite clashes over class and racial ideologies of sex and respectability, Winchell finds that most hostesses benefited from the USO's chaste image. In exploring the USO's treatment of female volunteers, Winchell not only brings the hostesses' stories to light but also supplies a crucial missing piece for understanding the complex ways in which the war both destabilized and restored certain versions of social order.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 18, 2020
USO volunteer here and was excited to finally sit down with this book I'd purchased a year ago. Problem is, it reads like a dry, tasteless college research paper chock-full of citations from other works. This could have been SO interesting, if only the author had made interviews with the hostesses and veterans the nucleus of the story, or dedicated each chapter to a different region instead of jumping all over the place. Instead, the precious few quotes of USO volunteers and patrons show up as blips swallowed by the undesirable format. A professor once told me that there are two kinds of historians: those that write hard-to-read "pillars of academia", and those that write "coffee table books" for the masses to enjoy and understand. This is the kind of writing that makes me want to scream, "Why can't it be both!?" Sigh. I need to start writing books or stop getting so excited over the potential of new ones.
October 23, 2012
I was excited to read this book, but was greatly disappointed. The book was repetitious, tedious, and biased. Many time I had to check to make sure I wasn't read reading the same passages because she repeated her self.
The content was so monotonous moving that I almost missed the parts where she interpreted and made her own value statement upon the topic she was covering. She continually made judgements on the USO's actions and view point based on present day values. That is just bad history writing. It would have been more valuable to compare the USO to the cultural trends of the time and judge if they where moving things in a progressive or regressive direction.
Finally, through out history army's have been followed by and serviced by "camp women" (aka. prostitutes). The USO was trying to meet the need of men for female companionship without promoting intercourse outside of marriage. Yes, the USO traded on the sexuality and feminists of women, but tried to do it is a noble way. This strikes me as an admirable effort, one that lifted the past role of women in war, giving the men something worth fighting for. Whitchell would have you believe is was a negative thing, and if she was writing about the gulf war I might agree. Instead she fails to she the USO in world war 2 as a possible positive step in the history if women.
November 29, 2018
Can I give it a 0 star? This book was terrible. I should have paid more attention to the reviews than the title and me thinking...huh...this is a little change up on some of the things that I read, but in the same way similiar when it comes to WWII.
From the title is says its a story. Well in turns into a history lessons, which then turns into a lecture of how she feels "white middle class" family's were bad during WWII. She then went into saying that pretty all the white people during that time were bad. That these "good girls" were doing it more to "feel good about themselves" as opposed to "doing their civic duty." The reason I have quotes is she has quotation marks on just about EVERY paragraph and not all are for references she has. It was so annoying.
The book repeated itself over and over again. I ended up skipping a few pages and she would say the same thing, and then it would happen some odd pages later.
She is making her own opinions on what is happening into todays world to what happened back then, which is wrong. She basically tried to make almost every girl in her 20's to be hookers who were leading on the guys and that the army had to always monitor them and control them. She did not cast them in good light, which is ironic since the title says Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun.
The whole book stunk. A book about the stories of some of the girls, which I thought I was going to read, would have been much better. There was one girl she mentioned at the end of the book that ended up marry one of the army guys, but that is all she said. There was no follow up, etc. Just either laziness or clueless that she needed to have further detail about them.
I do not recommend and I am not sure how this got published. STAY AWAY!!!
From the title is says its a story. Well in turns into a history lessons, which then turns into a lecture of how she feels "white middle class" family's were bad during WWII. She then went into saying that pretty all the white people during that time were bad. That these "good girls" were doing it more to "feel good about themselves" as opposed to "doing their civic duty." The reason I have quotes is she has quotation marks on just about EVERY paragraph and not all are for references she has. It was so annoying.
The book repeated itself over and over again. I ended up skipping a few pages and she would say the same thing, and then it would happen some odd pages later.
She is making her own opinions on what is happening into todays world to what happened back then, which is wrong. She basically tried to make almost every girl in her 20's to be hookers who were leading on the guys and that the army had to always monitor them and control them. She did not cast them in good light, which is ironic since the title says Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun.
The whole book stunk. A book about the stories of some of the girls, which I thought I was going to read, would have been much better. There was one girl she mentioned at the end of the book that ended up marry one of the army guys, but that is all she said. There was no follow up, etc. Just either laziness or clueless that she needed to have further detail about them.
I do not recommend and I am not sure how this got published. STAY AWAY!!!
October 10, 2025
Before I read this book, I did not know much about the USO. It all seemed like one random party after another. Nothing could be further from the truth. The USO was as well planned out and strategized as World War II itself. This book offers a behind-the-scenes look at everything that went into it. Fascinating.
August 7, 2015
This book is likely a dissertation ---- it certainly has an academic feel to it. What great about that is the bibliography which will be helpful for further research.
I was particularly interested in the role of race in the USO during WW II, and she did bring in that aspect in several places. I believe there is a whole other dissertation to be written on that subject alone!
Overall, this book was informational and shines a light on an aspect of the war that tends to fly under the radar or else fall victim to glorious hyperbole. I appreciate the tone of this book, written well after the glow of victory has worn off and the 21st century perspective is put in place. Not revisionist, just unflinching.
I was particularly interested in the role of race in the USO during WW II, and she did bring in that aspect in several places. I believe there is a whole other dissertation to be written on that subject alone!
Overall, this book was informational and shines a light on an aspect of the war that tends to fly under the radar or else fall victim to glorious hyperbole. I appreciate the tone of this book, written well after the glow of victory has worn off and the 21st century perspective is put in place. Not revisionist, just unflinching.
June 1, 2009
Ok, so "Read" is a bit of an exaggeration. I started the book and while the subject matter was interesting the writing was so dry and dull that I couldn't make it through more than a chapter or two. When there are so many well-written, interesting non-fiction books out there, I feel it's a waste of time to read the bad ones unless one is doing research.
February 17, 2015
This book was a historical account of the USO and it's function during World War2. It does seem repetitive at times, as one reviewer mentioned. Otherwise I found the book to be quite interesting even though it was written very much like a long research paper.
July 25, 2012
This book could have been a text book. VERY dry!
November 2, 2014
This was a fun, interesting read. It discusses U.S. female volunteers during WWII, and highlights the different ways in which they participated as USO junior and senior hostesses.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews