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

A recruitment poster by Howard Chandler Christy featuring a young woman in Navy uniform, gesturing expressively with an open letter in hand. The composition employs direct address to viewers, a technique common in early twentieth-century advertising illustration. The figure's confident pose and the poster's direct imperative—"Be a Man and Do It"—exemplify how visual communication during World War I merged commercial design with patriotic messaging. Christy's illustration style, with its careful rendering of fabric and facial expression, represents the high-finish advertising art that would influence early comic strip aesthetics, where expressive figures and clear visual hierarchy conveyed narrative and emotion across sequential imagery.