Wartime recruiting advertisement

During the 1939-45 war all manner of everyday items were in extremely short supply in Britain (and, presumably, even more so on the Continent). Clothing was strictly rationed, and a number of other austerity measures were introduced. Rubber was in extremely short supply, and girdles became extremely hard to get. However women were being drafted into the factories to replace the men who had been conscripted, and they complained bitterly that without their girdles they could not perform the heavy work being expected of them.

This was taken so seriously that a special exemption was created for women in essential services.

Although synthetic rubber had been invented in Germany before the war, it was markedly inferior to natural rubber, and in 1939 industry was still critically dependent on natural rubber. The main source of this was Malaysia, where the British had established enormous rubber plantations.

When Japan entered the war in 1942, it quickly overran Malaysia and gained control of these vital rubber plantations. This caused enormous problems in the Western world, and rubber was severely rationed, with the little that was available reserved almost exclusively to military applications. As a result girdles were in extremely restricted supply, even in the United States.

This US recruiting ad sought to capitalise on the resulting demand by offering girdles as bait to new recruits. One English correspondent to Girdles and More reported that her mother, who came from a working-class background and had never been able to afford to buy herself new girdles, had fallen for a similar advertisement in the UK. She received one girdle when she joined up in 1940, and a second in 1942. But after this rubber was no longer available for girdles, even for women in essential industries, and that was the last girdle she got.

Two girdles would seem to be a very poor reward for five years in the Services!

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